<p>This article from the current Princeton Alumni Weekly should give you a pretty good feel for what it's like to be a serious musician on campus:</p>
<p>Making music on campus
Students combine performance and studies in building careers</p>
<p>Violinist Caitlin Tully ’10 could have gone to a conservatory instead of to college. She performs as a soloist with major symphonies in the United States and in Europe and takes private lessons with famed violinist Itzhak Perlman in New York City. Music could have been her whole life, but she chose to come to Princeton because she wanted to broaden her education. She didn’t want to grow into an adult who knew only musicians, she says, and the better musicians she talked with told her to go to college — that the education would show up in her music. So far, she thinks her decision is paying off: “My music is becoming fuller and better.” </p>
<p>Few students arrive at Princeton already having established a professional music career as Tully has done. But, there are other outstanding student musicians on campus who want to make music their future livelihood and, like Tully, chose to attend Princeton and couple their musical training with a liberal arts education. They like the variety of studying a range of disciplines and getting to know students who are passionate about things besides music. Says Dean Reynolds ’07, a talented jazz bass player, “Some of my best inspirations for pieces have come from dialogues with non-musicians.” </p>
<p>Tully, who fell in love with the violin as she listened to the radio, and begged her parents to give her one for Christmas when she was 4 years old, practices several hours a day. As she works on a piece, she often figures out the “emotional story” behind the music. And she interprets the music based on “what makes most sense given the composers [and] the time in which they wrote.” </p>
<p>Since coming to Princeton Tully has cut back on her concert commitments to allow herself to settle into college life and make friends. On March 22–26, she will play Mozart’s “Concerto in G Major” with the Houston Symphony and in April will play several pieces at a recital at the Louvre in Paris. </p>
<p>To avoid missing classes, she works with her agent at IMG Artists to try to schedule concerts on weekends. Occasionally she does have to miss a class, however. “The life I have here is one of constant balance,” she says. This semester she has begun playing chamber music on campus through the Pro-gram in Musical Performance. </p>
<p>Her busy schedule of studies and practice doesn’t leave much margin for illness, printer breakdowns, or doing laundry. But she loves both Princeton and performing and wants to do it all. She knows that after college, her life will revolve around music and traveling to concerts. “I never wanted to do anything else as a career,” she says. </p>
<p>Geoff McDonald ’07 is not a professional, yet he is on his way to making a career in music. The assistant conductor of the University Orchestra, he is the most advanced conducting student for his age that Michael Pratt, conductor of the University Orchestra and director of the Program in Musical Performance, has seen at Princeton in 30 years. This spring he is busy auditioning for graduate school in hopes of obtaining a master’s degree in conducting. </p>
<p>McDonald has been conducting orchestras or choirs since his sophomore year of high school and been playing piano since age 5 and cello since age 10. He wanted to come to Princeton because he likes enriching his music with his academic studies, and the flexibility to continue studying voice, cello, and piano at the same time that he is developing as a conductor. It’s hard to say how many hours a day he practices because so much of what he does revolves around music — whether studying the composer Gustav Mahler for his thesis in the music department, dissecting a Beethoven score in preparing to conduct the University Orchestra or Sinfonia, singing with the Katzenjammers, or playing cello or piano with the orchestra. Had he chosen to go to a conservatory, he says, he might not have had such a varied experience and likely would not have been able to conduct until his senior year. </p>
<p>In January, he brought to life Beethoven’s “Coriolan” overture as he conducted the University Orchestra in Vienna. For a young conductor, the idea of interpreting a master’s score in the city where he built his reputation might seem daunting. But McDonald demonstrated the quiet confidence and knowledge of the composer that indicate the promise ahead. “Conductors cook very slowly,” says Pratt, and some of their best work occurs after age 60. But he sees “tremendous potential” in McDonald. For each score, says Pratt, a conductor must be able to answer two key questions: what he wants the work to sound like, and how to get the musicians to produce that sound. McDonald, says Pratt, “is on his way to being able to do that.” </p>
<p>McDonald hopes to join other talented alumni who are making a career of conducting, such as Hobart Earle ’83, conductor of the Odessa Philharmonic Orchestra in Ukraine, and Katherine FitzGibbon ’98, who is a conductor at Cornell University this year while she is finishing her doctorate in conducting at Boston University. </p>
<p>While McDonald and Tully came to Princeton knowing that music was their future, Reynolds wasn’t sure at first that he wanted to make a career of it. Reynolds, who began playing bass with a jazz ensemble in sixth grade, wanted to continue his jazz education in college but thought he might major in math. After getting more involved in the music department, he realized he wanted not only to major in music but also to make a job of it. “When I was in high school, jazz was once a week after school for about an hour and 10 Saturdays a year, and now it’s pretty much every day,” says Reynolds. Anthony Branker ’80, the head of Princeton’s jazz program, calls Reynolds one of the most talented jazz musicians on campus. </p>
<p>Reynolds, whose thesis deals with the challenges non-African composers face when writing African-inspired music, anchors a number of jazz ensembles as a bass player, plays for fun with a reggae band, composes music, and is studying piano. After graduation, Reynolds plans on moving to Philadelphia, where he will compose and perform gigs with drummer Chuck Staab ’07, tenor sax player Ben Wasserman ’07, and other musicians. Ultimately he hopes to attend graduate school to study ethnomusicology. </p>
<p>After four years at Princeton, he says, “I feel like a completely different player.”</p>