Patricia Chane ’76: Keeping Music at the Center of Her Life

Chane grew up in Dorchester, the youngest of three sisters in a household where instruments were close by. Her father, who had polio as a child, had been prescribed violin lessons to help restore dexterity in his left hand—a treatment so successful that he later performed for doctors and staff at Children’s Hospital as an example of music’s therapeutic power. By the time Chane reached fourth grade, there was already a violin waiting for her.

Her sisters played, too. One took up violin, another cello. Chane began on violin before finding the instrument that would become her musical home: the viola.

That shift came during an audition for the Greater Boston Youth Symphony. She auditioned on both violin and viola—but the orchestra wanted her on viola. She stayed with it, and decades later, it remains the instrument most closely associated with her name, even as she continues to play violin as well.

A Life in Performance

Today, Chane is an active violist and violinist performing throughout Greater Boston. Over the years, she has played with the Brockton Symphony, Rivers Symphony, and Brookline Music School Adult Chamber Orchestra; founded chamber groups including the Rosewood Quartet, Willow Street Strings, and Shovel Town Strings; performed in musical theater pit orchestras, chamber ensembles, and churches; and appeared as a soloist with the Waltham Philharmonic. She has also performed at venues including Symphony Hall and Jordan Hall and toured Europe with American Music Abroad.

When forming chamber ensembles, Chane has learned that being visible is key.

“If you’re not out there, then where are you?” she said. “People don’t know where you are. They don’t want to play with you because they don’t know you.”

But music is only part of Chane’s story. Her career also reflects a remarkable ability to adapt and persevere when circumstances forced an unforeseen change in direction.

An Unexpected Career Turn

After graduating from Emmanuel, Chane continued her graduate studies at Boston University and began what she expected would be a career in music education. She taught elementary general music and strings in Middleborough and Braintree, developed curriculum, taught private lessons, and supported school performances and orchestra programs. Then Proposition 2½ led to sweeping cuts in education, and her teaching career was abruptly derailed.

Rather than step away from work—or from music—Chane began again.

She retrained in computer programming, entered the world of data systems and information services, and went on to build a long and accomplished parallel career in technology and operations. Over more than three decades with Boston Public Schools, she served in a succession of increasingly complex roles, from programmer and analyst to project leader and IT specialist. Her work included building databases, managing large-scale technology rollouts, writing SQL queries, training staff, supporting hundreds of users, and translating complicated regulations into working systems. She later brought those same organizational and communications skills to Brockton Symphony Orchestra and the Town of Canton.

Where Music and Technology Meet

For Chane, the distance between music and systems work is not as wide as it might seem.

“I think there’s a lot of transference,” she said. “What I learned in music carries over to computers—and the more I did computer troubleshooting work, the more skilled I became at analyzing violin and viola music for learning and practicing.”

Both require structure, discipline, and patience and involve breaking large problems into smaller parts, listening closely, recognizing patterns, and troubleshooting what is not working. The same mind that could analyze a system design could also work through a difficult musical passage. The same habits that made her a careful musician—practice, precision, repetition, and collaboration—served her well in technology.

That blend of artistry and analytical thinking has shaped the way Chane moves through the world. She speaks about music not only as performance, but as communication, service, and calling.

That sense of purpose is especially clear in the role faith has played throughout her life. Church performance has long been central to her musical life, and she describes playing at Mass as a form of gratitude—an offering of the talent she has been given. For her, music is meant to be shared.

“I just feel this—I’ve got to keep playing,” she said. “That’s what I’m supposed to be doing.”

It is also meant to be sustained.

Chane is passionate about the need to keep classical music visible at a time when arts education has shrunk and younger audiences have less exposure to it. She worries about what is lost when students are not taught to play, listen, and appreciate live performance. Her answer is straightforward: musicians have to keep showing up. In churches, schools, nursing homes, community spaces, and concert halls, the work is to keep the music alive and present.