AS MUSICIAN AND MOTHER, DIANNE BETKOWSKI DECLINES TO COLOR WITHIN THE LINES. She homeschools her children as a “fellow student,” and her approach to music allows room for the listener to push out their own boundaries and be open to diverse styles and collaborations.

“There was no Title 9, no outlets for girls to play sports. So I started tournaments and did end up to be one of the first girls to play Little League baseball in the unsuited teams where anybody can play. When I turned 12 and was too old for that, I wrote for permission to please try out for the (next step up) Babe Ruth League. They wrote back and said, permission granted. It was 1972, I think. Per the law of the land, girls could now come out for league baseball.”

Betkowski has always had a knack for thinking outside the box. “I knew shortly after being born that I was meant to be a percussionist. My parents didn’t want the noise, but they drank coffee and had a huge variety of coffee can sizes and I would play on those.” And her family often spent summers in New York City where she collected things to entertain herself. “I remember trying to complete a deck of cards one card at a time as we were walking around. I found an old guitar that was missing some strings. I didn’t know how to tune it, but I made up some chords and began to practice on it.”

A self-proclaimed “disaster” with the piano followed. “I could not memorize my music very well, didn’t like the practice, and didn’t have the guidance I think a kid needs. So recital time came – and I froze. I went to the keyboard and had no idea where to put my hands, so I just sort of played whatever chords I could think of at the time for what I thought was three minutes, but was probably more like 40 seconds. Then I got up and took a bow and everyone politely clapped. Oh, my parents were furious, and that was pretty much the end of the piano.”

And the beginning of cello, the instrument she went on to study along with music composition while attending the National Academy of Arts high school. “But I wasn’t as serious a student as I could have been. I really enjoyed a lot of things and couldn’t imagine doing the four hours a day practice I was supposed to. I was writing plays with my friends and started a newspaper.”

At age 15, she began composing classical music. “I had an epiphany that nothing was stopping me from writing music. I didn’t need to be a man, I didn’t need lessons, I didn’t need anything but the desire to write, a pad of paper, and pencil.” She wrote a rock opera for school. “It was supposed to be a literature project but I thought, ‘I’ll write a libretto; won’t that count?’ I had friends willing to sing the songs for me in their garage and record it.”

As an undergraduate in music performance at the University of Illinois (and later graduate student at Boston University), Betkowski narrowed her wide focus to cello. “I started practicing seven or eight hours a day. You tire yourself out physically and mentally by doing more than four hours and end up practicing mistakes. It’s extremely taxing on the small muscles and tendons. I was just punishing myself. When I cut back to four hours and then spent the next couple hours dealing with my guilt, I found I was playing much better.”

She went on to perform, record, and tour extensively with a variety of orchestras, including the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, the Utah Symphony, the Honolulu Symphony, and, as principal cellist, the Shreveport Symphony. She has also performed in chamber ensembles including the award-winning Lark Quartet in New York, the Apollo Quartet, and the Honolulu Symphony String Quartet. Her original compositions have been performed by a number of quartets, symphonies and chamber orchestras.

But performing has never come easy. “I’ve just realized after all these years that I’m really an introvert and not a performer. I had a terrible time with nerves. I thought I just needed to perform more, so I set up a million recitals and concerts for myself and figured the more experience I had the easier it gets, but that wasn’t true.” While pregnant with her first daughter, she had another epiphany. “I realized there were a lot of things that mattered a whole lot more than how well I played. I was playing in a festival orchestra at the time, playing beautifully and practically not even caring. I was principal cellist and had lots of solos and leadership responsibilities, and it just went so easily.”

In 2001, Betkowski and her husband – who she met in St. Louis years earlier while performing with the symphony orchestra there – relocated to Denver with their then three-and-a-half and six-month-old daughters. The couple now has three children, ages 14, 11, and 7. Betkowski homeschools the two youngest, and credits her children with the motivation to do so. “The middle one, especially (the oldest has always wanted to attend school), was not happy in school and complained bitterly about it. She was desperate to be homeschooled. I thought I couldn’t do it, so I put it off a year and then got up my guts during her second-grade year.”

Since then, Betkowski has become an enthusiastic advocate for the benefits of homeschooling. “School does not only happen between four walls with somebody telling you what you ought to know. The ultimate life is to be impassioned about many things, to know how, and feel you have the right and the means to pursue them. So I tend to see my role as somebody who introduces my children to a variety of possible experiences and knowledge, and acts as a facilitator to help them pursue the things they really love.”

In addition to studying subjects like math, science, French, and history, she and her children learn in real-world settings. “We went to help out at a miniature horse farm, visited artists in their studios, helped out in restaurants. They love Indian and Thai food and we all cook together. To homeschool, I don’t think a person has to consider themselves a particularly good teacher. I think they have to consider themselves a good learner. Homeschooling is a matter of being a fabulous fellow student.”

Meanwhile, five years ago, Betkowski the musician launched Denver Eclectic Concerts, dedicated to broadening public exposure to diverse and unique music presented by local artists who contribute to the “exceptional flavor and richness of the culture of Denver.” The venture celebrates her longtime passion for musical collaboration. “Years ago at the Aspen Music Festival, I was in a leadership program and got to be a principal in one of the orchestras. I hooked up with a jazz trumpet player who’d lost his cellist and we decided to be a duo. Then, in St. Louis, I became friends with a woman of Mexican heritage who was writing these hauntingly beautiful songs in Spanish, so I wrote some cello parts and we began performing these goosebump-gorgeous songs.”

Through Eclectic Concerts, Betkowski hopes to interest people in the diversity of classical music while presenting a wide range of other types of music in a welcoming, accessible setting. “I’ve found more and more that I like so many different kinds of music. I just want people to approach music as music, and not, this is who I am because I listen to this.” Five Eclectic Mix concerts a year offer a classical and non-classical half, and often feature collaboration between the two. Concerts also often include original compositions by Betkowski and other local composers.

“We have an in-house classical band, our Intermezzo Chamber Players, and there are also purely classical guest recitals, usually things you don’t often hear, like oboe and clarinet, or a saxophone quartet. You can listen to almost all of our concerts at eclecticconcerts.com. The venue on Old South Pearl Street is kind of unusual, too. It’s actually a mortgage brokerage filled with art. We also have a caterer with great Lebanese food and offer wine for a donation.

“It’s just a mature approach to all kinds of music, with classical music as the backbone,” Betkowski continues. “Maybe people will say – I love what the classical had to offer and I love what the non-classical had to offer – instead of being typecast or pigeonholed.”

(Editor’s note: Denver Eclectic Concerts 2012-2013 concert season will begin on September 13 at Mortgage West, in the “Plum Building” at 1705 S. Pearl St. For a list of upcoming concert dates go to eclecticconcerts.com or call 303-393-7116.)