{"id":372,"date":"2019-01-28T16:06:13","date_gmt":"2019-01-28T16:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/commons\/?p=372"},"modified":"2019-01-28T22:14:10","modified_gmt":"2019-01-28T22:14:10","slug":"a-musical-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/commons\/2019\/01\/28\/a-musical-journey\/","title":{"rendered":"A Musical Journey"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jordan Couceyro, ’20, <\/b>Arts & Sciences<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Even
Even though I\u2019ve played piano since I was a kid, I\u2019ve never really considered myself a musician.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Even though I\u2019ve played piano since I was a kid, I\u2019ve never really considered myself a musician. I\u2019m not sure exactly why \u2013 I was fairly decent, and I really liked playing. I loved learning about and playing a wide variety of different styles, from classical to jazz to pop and even the unique jaunt of Jewish folk songs. I picked up more instruments as I got older: oddities like the melodica and harmonica, and a ukulele so that I could work on singing. I even joined marching band in high school and became a drum major. Senior year hits, and as all the other drum majors and band captains went on to audition for different conservatories, I stuck to my guns. Not that majoring in music determined whether I was a musician, but I felt like it just wasn\u2019t the path for me.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, I considered myself much more than just somebody who played the piano. I loved learning other instruments and listened to music near-constantly. Music was and is an indispensable part of my life, even if I spent my time studying metabolic pathways instead of improvisation techniques. Part of what made Vanderbilt so alluring was the fact that I could easily make music a part of my life here: we\u2019re in Music City after all.<\/p>\n

I started off taking jazz piano lessons and taking a 1-credit performance class in Blair\u2019s jazz department. For the first time, I was able to learn from professional jazz musicians instead of my high school band director and YouTube videos. I felt as technically skilled as I had ever been and was comfortable enough to improv in all sorts of styles. The enjoyment of playing in a small combo encouraged me to look for more people to play with and even led to me meeting a close group of friends early on in my first year. The simple fact that every Commons House had a practice room helped me find people to make music with and led to me finding the most incredible people who I still live with today.<\/p>\n

One of these friends happened to be involved in a lot of the theater organizations here, and he quickly convinced me to play in the pit orchestra. I loved being part of a big production, and the community of the organization welcomed me with open arms. I began to explore even more, just as I had back when I was first playing the piano. I went from being a hired musician to an accompanist and Sound Designer for a show and got to learn about everything that goes into making the aural atmosphere of a show come to life.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think that I would have had the chances to engage with music anywhere else. Not only have I had so many opportunities to explore different aspects of the thing I love, but I\u2019ve been welcomed and encouraged to grow every step of the way. I even became involved with a service organization that uses or engages in music to help children with disabilities, and as of today serve as the president of it. I want to use this organization to help spread music\u2019s power to both the Nashville and Vanderbilt communities. Today I stand at one of the final steps of this journey: I want to start my own performance organization to offer all kinds of students a low-commitment and low-pressure opportunity to perform and make music a part of their lives \u2013 regardless of whether or not they consider themselves musicians.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jordan Couceyro, ’20, Arts & Sciences Even though I\u2019ve played piano since I was a kid, I\u2019ve never really considered myself a musician. I\u2019m not sure exactly why \u2013 I was fairly decent, and I really liked playing. I loved learning about and playing a wide variety of different styles, from classical to jazz to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8009,"featured_media":373,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,21],"tags":[19,37],"class_list":["post-372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-identity-and-involvement","category-self-discovery","tag-blair-school-of-music","tag-college-of-arts-and-sciences"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/commons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/commons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/commons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/commons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8009"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/commons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=372"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/commons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":374,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/commons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372\/revisions\/374"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/commons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/commons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/commons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/commons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}