In the fall of 2011, I stepped foot on the Liberty University campus for the very first time. To most of the world, Liberty University has gained an exceedingly troubled reputation – and that’s probably putting it lightly. But in 2011, an era before Trumpism and before Jerry Falwell Jr’s alleged pool boy scandals, Liberty was best known as a bastion for evangelical Christianity. Its motto, “Training Champions for Christ” was etched on every possible surface the school had to spare. To a very doe-eyed freshman like me – Liberty seemed like the most incredible and state-of-the-art place in the world. It baffled me that a “Christian school” was able to maintain facilities that rivaled those at schools like Harvard or MIT.
Back then, however, Liberty didn’t have a dedicated School of Music program or building. Instead, my program fell under the Department of Music within the College of Arts and Humanities. In fact, rather than a “Flute Performance” degree, I was technically studying “instrumental performance – non-keyboard emphasis.” Our facilities were a small segment of a long strip of departments housed in one building hidden behind the school’s flagship academic building, DeMoss Hall. At the time, the area behind the building was a dedicated hang-out spot for students, with a huge fountain, and a collection of restaurants housed inside a large warehouse called The Hangar. The result was a courtyard resembling a nice strip mall.
Owing to the small size and lack of notoriety associated with Liberty’s music program at the time, I was cautioned by many leading up to my enrollment that it might be more wise if I applied elsewhere. Perhaps one of the more popular and prestigious music conservatories for flutists: Peabody, Carnegie-Mellon, Yale, or Rice. But I had read great things about Professor Alycia Hugo, Liberty’s flute professor, and principle flute of the Roanoke and Lynchburg Symphony Orchestras. One of my dearest high school friends had enrolled in the Nursing Program, and I thought it might be incredible if we were both at the same school. I had also always taken my faith very very seriously, and Liberty seemed to be a more measured Christian university to attend than many of its more conservative counterparts.
While Liberty was not for everyone, even then, and most certainly not now, it is my belief that it is exactly where I was meant to be in that chapter of my life. The small size of the music program (roughly 200 students, only 30 or so of which were performance majors) gave me the chance to befriend almost all of my classmates. It also narrowed the pool so that I was competing for the first time with multiple flute players of an incredibly high caliber. Though the student body was small, the competition was remarkably fierce. Performance majors with a woodwind emphasis were not even allowed to continue in the performance degree without securing a position in the Symphony Orchestra or the Wind Ensemble. My freshmen year, following a disastrous audition, I secured the 6th or last chair in the wind ensemble, barely being allowed to proceed in my major as a result.
To her credit, Professor Hugo helped to stem toxic competition amongst her flute studio by incorporating all of us into an unranked flute ensemble. In the group, we were all equal. We took turns playing first parts, playing piccolo, and cycling through harmony parts. Great care was taken that we all feel equal and appreciated. In fact, I recall a flute lesson I had with Professor Hugo during my freshman year where I asked her who the best flute player was in the program, to which she responded “all of you have your differing qualities you bring to the table, and you are all talented. What will set any of you apart will be which of you work the hardest.” I never asked her who the “best” was again.
As is the case with most collegiate musicians, I had come from a very insular high school program back home where I had little in the way of competition (a big fish in a very little pond as they say). It was humbling and grounding to find myself, for the first time, in a place where I was one in a large pool of musicians who were all extremely talented, committed, and driven. I was shoved out of my comfort zone; I had to face defeat and failure in a much more profound way than I ever had before.
I was confronted, anew, with the idea that maybe I wasn’t the “best” after all. Maybe “best” was a socially constructed concept. How could I stand out when all the other flutists in my program, who had seniority over me, were equally talented and hard-working? The answer, I would come to learn, is that music, like all art, is essentially unquantifiable. The “better performer” is not only subjective, but how well individuals perform on any given day will also vary. All that we can do is work our hardest, give our very best, and then allow the audience, the panel, the music director, to come to their own conclusions about how the music affects them. Each director has their own idea of what a “good” flute sound is. Each member of the audience carries their own memories and experiences into their interpretation of your art. You cannot weigh your value as a musician by the opinions of others. If they have constructive criticism that will help to edify and bridge that everlasting gap between what you desire to say and what is actually heard, take that advice whole-heartedly, but anything else should be disregarded and you must charge forward. Go with confidence that in the same way one tree is not more beautiful than any other tree, not really, no two arts, no two artists, are more valuable or valid than any other. You must “speak” your art into existence. If you do not, no one else will ever be able to say it the same way you can. What a loss that would be. If you speak, if you play, someone will hear it. Someone will treasure it – whether it’s an audience of one, or one-thousand.
That being said… I did not take this lesson to heart at the time. One of the most beautiful and yet dangerous qualities of music is that it’s an immediately gratifying art form. When you perform in front of an audience and they love it, they let you know. They applaud, they congratulate you in the aftermath of the performance. When you’re a young person still grappling with your self-esteem, struggling with establishing your identity and sense of self – music tends to become a very volatile, unstable, and ultimately shallow substitute for those qualities. Make a big enough mistake during a performance and your entire sense of self becomes perilously endangered. Fail to win that spot in the orchestra and suddenly you feel worthless, ashamed, and untalented. If you tie your self-worth to music, like any art, you risk tying yourself to something that is easily rejected, easily criticized, and easily dismissed. While an audience member commenting on a poor performance may believe that their criticism falls only upon the work itself, to a musician, it is very difficult not to take criticism personally. It’s just the name of the game. And during my time at Liberty, I struggled heavily with this very issue.
It wasn’t until I began to regularly win auditions and accolades within the program that I began to realize how fragile, unreliable, and occasionally shallow success can be. I always expected that winning a principal position, becoming the best in my program, would “complete me.” However, it did not. I was forced to reckon with myself in a way I never had before. Why was I not satisfied? Why didn’t I feel confident now? Why did I still feel so insecure? Who was I really? How could I say something with my music when I didn’t even know who I was?
I left Liberty with most of those questions still left unanswered. I had a new sense of confidence, having obtained a bachelor’s degree and having completed the myriad of requirements it took to do so – but my personal life was filled with confusion and plenty of mental anguish that was starting to take a toll on my musical life.
Before finishing my studies at Liberty, I enrolled for my Master of Music degree in Performance at the School of Music at Lee University, a much more intimate university than what I had experienced at Liberty. I hoped the change of pace, the change of scenery, would be constructive on my journey. Not only professionally, but also personally.
It wasn’t long until I met the brilliant Professor Kristen Holritz, Principal Flute for the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra. Since I was her sole master’s student, Professor Holritz held me to a rigorous practice schedule. She introduced me to several life-changing practice tips, and further equipped me with the tools I would need to be a successful musician in the ever-changing classical music landscape in the modern world. She even let me sub for her during a couple of Chattanooga Wind Quintet performances that she was unable to attend. I owe a great deal to her contributions in my life. She not only set an incredible professional example, but she set a great personal example of what a self-possessed and confident musician can be.
It was during this time at Lee that the puzzle pieces started sliding together. I won’t pretend that I have all the answers to life’s greatest questions, or that I even have all of my own life figured out – but in my time at Lee I finally gained a sense of self that could delight in my own music without being afraid it made me arrogant to do so. I realized I can acknowledge where I find success, that some of this is due to my own hard work, and that I can learn from my mistakes in a healthy way that doesn’t fill me with shame and guilt.
To conclude this three-part blog series on my music education, I would like to reiterate that so much of who I am, and the kind of musician I am, can be directly attributed to the efforts and the hard work of the incredible teaching musicians God led into my life. I hope to pass on their knowledge and some of their creative heart to my own students, and to impact the lives of others the way they so heavily impacted me.