15 June 2010

Perfecting Their Pitch

By Brian Heyman

This essay is excerpted from Pop Culture versus Real America, published by the Bureau of International Information Programs. A profile of the rapper Notorious B.I.G. appears here.

Benjamin Harris sat on the stage in front of the Sphinx Symphony Orchestra. He put his bow to his large double bass and played a movement of a concerto for the crowd watching the final concert of the 2009 Sphinx Competition at Orchestra Hall in Detroit. Robyn Quinnett had played in the semifinals a few days earlier at another Michigan venue, Rackham Auditorium in Ann Arbor. She put her bow to her violin and let the soothing sounds flow for the panel of judges.

The two 21-year-olds are music students at the Juilliard School, a highly selective and prestigious New York City school of drama, music, and dance. Harris and Quinnett were participating in the Sphinx Organization’s annual event for black and Latino string players, part of its program to develop young minority artists and to enhance diversity among classical musicians. While young musicians nationwide submitted audition tapes, only 18, Harris and Quinnett among them, were chosen for the semifinal.

Harris began making a name for himself by reaching the ultimate round and being selected by the judges as the runner-up among the three finalists. He took home $5,000 and a glass trophy.

“It was definitely a rush,” Harris said, reflecting later in the year at Juilliard. “Just performing there with a good orchestra behind me, it was quite a feeling. That’s what it was all about. I didn’t really care about the prize at that moment. Getting to the finals was good enough.”

Quinnett would have loved to make the finals and could try again, but she looked back from school and expressed no regrets about her semifinal performance.

“I wouldn’t have changed a thing,” she said. “Competitions are funny. I’ve done a lot of them. You have to put your best foot forward and hope you have a good day. I think I had a good day. You learn a lot from the judges’ comments.”

Both Harris and Quinnett aspire to earn their living in classical music, to put their lessons, talent, and passion to use by performing for others. They can’t help but have a connection to their music and their instruments.

“Beautiful sounds please people, and I love to entertain people,” Quinnett said. “I love for people to enjoy. Music, in general, just takes you away from all the gritty things in life. It can clear your mind. It’s very therapeutic. The violin is really expressive.”

While Quinnett began on the piano at age 6 before switching to the violin, Harris wanted a more pulsating soundtrack when he was a child. Although he lived for a little while in Florida and Ohio, he was born and mostly raised in the city of Xalapa in Veracruz, Mexico.

“My mom tried to put me into classical and take me to operas, and I didn’t want to have anything to do with it,” Harris said. “I didn’t understand it. It was too serious. I couldn’t stay still for two seconds.”

So he took up the electric bass guitar when he was 10 and made money playing in clubs with rock bands beginning when he was 13. But he explored other music, including jazz, and took a new direction at 16.

“I started double bass and I started listening to a lot of classical music,” Harris said. “I just realized that’s what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”

He studied for two years at the Instituto Superior de Música del Estado de Veracruz because the price was right.

“My mom was encouraging me to get into that music school because they give you the instruments for free,” Harris said. “We didn’t have the money to pay for instruments. I was like, ‘Wow, the double bass is expensive, so I might as well take advantage.’”

It was no surprise he pursued this music. Harris is from a musical family. His mom, Cecilia Ladrón de Guevara, is a singing teacher at the conservatory in Veracruz. She is in that university’s choir and sings once a year in an opera. His American father, Arlan Harris, went to the North Texas School of Music and is a piano technician in New York City. He used to be a drummer in jazz bands and played percussion in a symphony.

Benjamin Harris came to New York and auditioned at Juilliard. He received a scholarship and now is in his third year at the school.

“My future goal professionally is first to try to find a job in an orchestra,” he said. “That’s where I would get my steady income. And then I would also like to keep playing solos and have a solo career as well. I like being soloist of an orchestra. I think I would like to be in the U.S. for a while and pursue being with great musicians everywhere around the world.”

Quinnett entered the musical world with her piano lessons on the small Caribbean island of Montserrat, where she was born. She was a 7-year-old living in North Carolina, where her American father, Larry, was stationed in the military, when she saw a symphony orchestra. She asked her parents for a violin and finally received one about a year later and started lessons.

Quinnett then lived the life of a military brat, moving to bases in places like Texas and Tennessee. She returned to North Carolina and took high school courses online so she could have more time to devote to her two passions. Besides violin, she also showed grace on skates, competing as a figure skater. She said she won nine gold medals and a silver in U.S. Figure Skating Association competitions in her age groupings.

“I just had a great time with it,” Quinnett said. “I’ve always been into athletic things.”

But at age 15, she gave up skating to focus her energies on making music. “I had to choose between the two of them because I couldn’t take them both seriously,” she said. “I liked violin a lot better.”

After reaching the semifinals of the Junior Division in the 2006 Sphinx Competition, she went to study violin for a year in Georgia, then came to New York City on her own. She eventually auditioned at Juilliard. The acceptance meant everything to her. “It was like being reborn,” Quinnett said. “It was a dream come true.” Now she is in her second year and thinking about playing professionally and possibly teaching someday.

“The sky’s the limit,” Quinnett said. “I would love to have solo opportunities. I also really love chamber music, but it’s hard to be in a group that you click with. It’s like being married to a few other people. My hope is to find people that I really like to work with and have the creative freedom to decide who I want to play with and what I want to play. In that way, you’d have to be in a soloist tier. There are a lot of factors that go into whether you can become successful at it. But if I’m working hard, sometimes it surprises you. It’s just little steps at the time, I think.

“I wouldn’t really judge my success by how well-known or how much money. But I would definitely want to be well-liked. I would want people to want to hear me. Then I would be doing something valuable.”

Brian Heyman has been a sportswriter in the New York area for 27 years, earning numerous national and regional journalism awards. He currently works for the Journal News, a daily Gannett newspaper based in White Plains, New York, and freelances for The New York Times and The Associated Press.

(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov)