Krechkovsky, McFadden to make beautiful music together – JH News&Guide

This past week, the Grand Teton Music Festival added an instrument to its orchestra: wedding bells.

Joe McFadden, principal bassist for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and Marta Krechkovsky, assistant concertmaster for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, met here at the Festival in 2021.

“I saw her playing in the orchestra,” McFadden recalled. “Then I went to see her in some chamber music and I was mesmerized as soon as she walked on stage.”

“I used to come later in the festival,” Krechkovsky said, “and he always came in the beginning. But that year we overlapped. We hung out a little after a concert, then we went separate ways.”

In 2022 they overlapped again. “I remember being drawn to him,” she said. “He just had such a kind presence.”

After his orchestra duties that season, he headed to Utah to see friends, but he got called back to fill in for a bassist who had to cancel at the last moment. He texted Krechkovsky: “Guess who’s coming to play Mahler’s Second?”

“I was excited he came back,” she said. But then they went their separate ways again.

In 2023 their GTMF schedules overlapped for three week and the tempo of their relationship picked up. At the end of her stay in Jackson, Krechkovsky headed to Vail to perform. McFadden was almost done for the summer, too, so she asked him to join her.

“So we spent some more time together in Vail, like 10 days,” she said.

Shortly after that, McFadden texted her to say he was off to Stockholm and Copenhagen.

“She sent me a text: ‘How would you feel if a cute Ukrainian girl joined you?’ I said I would love it.”

With Krechkovsky in Pittsburgh and McFadden in Atlanta, their affair was long-distance, but both cities are in the same time zone, and it’s a mere 90-minute flight between them. Mondays, McFadden said, are an orchestra musician’s Saturday, with a day or two off before reconvening for the coming concerts.

“I’d play the Sunday matinee … then fly out that evening,” Krechkovsky said. “Then I’d fly home Tuesday evening.”

Sometimes she would play a week in Atlanta, or he would perform in Pittsburgh.

“We make it work,” she said

“Lots of frequent flyer miles,” McFadden said of what helped them stay close.

“He has never met me at the airport without flowers,” Krechkovsky said. The one time they could recalled that he couldn’t, he greeted her with a latte from Overview Coffee, her favorite Teton Village cafe, and some funny socks from Teton Village Sports.

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