Ticket to the World by Robert

Ticket to the World by Robert - November 2020 Scholarship Essay

I was in the third grade when I received my first glimpse of the worlds revealed through music education. It was that year when my elementary school allowed students to first join the chorus. In our inaugural concert, we sang a simple African spiritual, and a French lullaby. I was enthralled at the diversity in just those two pieces and felt oddly connected to people I had never met, and places I had not known existed.

Just one year later I was allowed to select a musical instrument to play in the school band. My older sister had brought home a school clarinet which, with her novice hands and shallow breaths, squeaked like a tortured cat. I wanted a deeper sound and enthusiastically chose the trumpet. The trumpet welcomed me into other worlds including the French Quarter of New Orleans which took shape through each note of jazz, and bloodstained battlefields that arose through the somber melodic dirge of Taps.

Trumpet was my primary love until high school, when I was given the opportunity to explore other instruments. During my four years I learned marimba, French horn, electric guitar as well as several other percussion instruments. I joined field band, jazz band, marching band, and winter percussion. I played music rooted in opera, musical theater, pop culture and patriotic parades. I learned more history through music, than in any history class I took.

My schooling took place in a rural district in Upstate New York where there was a severe lack of access and exposure to the professional arts. Our small agrarian community had no movie theater, much less a performing arts center. Transportation expenses were prohibitive to taking field trips for theater or musical outings. The music education that I received, however, brought these arts into my school and into my home. It made the world beyond my community both alive and accessible.

My exposure to music is the aspect of my education for which I am most grateful. Pragmatically, it was through music that I developed the self discipline that allowed me to graduate as Salutatorian, and gain admission into an Ivy League College. Spiritually, it has connected me to people and places from ages gone by, as well as my contemporaries. It has become a part of who I am, and continues to inform how I engage with the world at large, and open doors to my future.