About Me

My mom tells me that music has always been a part of my life, and when I reflect on my life, there has always been a soundtrack to the places that I’ve been and the things that I’ve done. Music has been a second language for me, a way of communicating ideas and expressing ideas. Music has universal appeal, and I first discovered the joy of making music at a very young age. My mother learned about a program called KinderMusik while studying education in college, and when she had me, she felt that it was very important to my development as an artist and as a person to get involved in early music literacy.  ​     KinderMusik was all about connecting sound with patterns familiar to early learners. We sang songs together, and learned how to match tempo and dynamic in music within our own bodies and with different toys, like colored scarves, and sounding blocks. These methods make a lot of sense to me now as a music education student, but that wasn’t where my exposure to music stopped. My family listened to Abba in the car and danced to Ke$ha in the kitchen, and by the time I was in Pre-School, I could fluently sing “Just Haven’t Met You Yet” by Michael Bublé and had developed a keen interest in Andrew Lloyd Weber musicals.  ​     It was out of this spark of interest that my parents decided to get me involved in community musical theater. A program in our area had recently sprung up, with excellent instructors in voice, acting, and dance. By this time, I was in Kindergarten, and I was still searching for something that I could really resonate with (suffice to say, T-Ball was not a success). The exciting part about music theater was that my love for music met storytelling: the most human discipline. All art is intended to tell some kind of story, and this allowed me to use music as an outlet for my emotion. The other thing I learned as I began my journey into community theater was professionalism. As a primarily shy kid, I learned how to articulate myself in a friendly and appropriate manner across many stages, including the classroom, and eventually the interview desk. The lasting impact of getting involved in the performing aspect of music was massive.  ​     Because I loved to sing, it was no shock that my name was first on the sign up list for my school choir once I was finally old enough to audition. To my delight, I made the cut! I was only in the third grade, but choir taught me what it meant to blend into an ensemble. The collective aspect of a musical ensemble is virtually unmatched across any other extracurricular. When I was in the middle school band, this idea came up again, and I learned that I don’t have to attack the snare drum: it makes sound by design!        By high school, music was the center of my life. My high school choir director taught me how to use my instrument in a healthy and productive manner, and I was first introduced to the world of competitive ensembles. Unlike what you see on TV, competition in music is usually more about fellowship than it is rivalry. Meeting people from other schools who were also hugely passionate about music was exhilarating, and made the world feel a little bit warmer. I think that my exposure to what was going on in other music programs also enlightened me to what variety existed in the world of school music. It was my sophomore year that my director recommended that I audition for the All-State Honor Choir in Fort Wayne. On my first day of rehearsal, I had my world turned upside down. Music was about the small details: the little brush strokes that make a painting complete. I was so inspired by the idea that a group of people could continue to push the boundaries of artistry higher and higher if the sum of our voices became something bigger than any one of us: something moving and breathing - not something mechanical or “right and wrong”. When I returned home to my high school, I shared my vision with everyone. Despite receiving a couple of looks from my classmates, I carried on, knowing that I could elevate the way that my ensemble made music together by raising my peers up and encouraging our group to do its collective best. That next year, I student-directed our prep group, and grew a love for leadership in the music classroom. I started to look at all of my teachers’ decisions from a different lens: how their actions at the front of the room could motivate their students to become better versions of themselves everyday.  ​     Throughout the years, music has raised me up, and built lasting friendships and qualities that have meaningfully changed my life for the better. The most exciting part about my music life history is that it is still being written, a story which is dynamic and fundamentally beautiful. Like Billy Joel said, music is “an explosive expression of humanity,” and its universal reach makes it a powerful medium for which to illuminate the vast darkness of the world.