Red gum is wedged into the corner of the wall. When practice room 228 sits empty, it still resonates from the droning cello and soaring voices of students in neighboring rooms. Its baby grand piano fills most of the space, and a chair confronts a full-length mirror, waiting for a musician to fill the chamber with sound. Water stains pattern the peg-board walls. Outside, the door is gray and covered in scuff marks from violin, cello, and saxophone cases bumping into it. There’s a small square window for practice-room-hopefuls to peek in and see if the room is occupied. The walls lining the hallway are green or blue depending on the light.
It’s 8 a.m., and the Music Annex walls are the color of Orbit sweet mint gum.
8:01 a.m.
Jeff Myers
Year: First year of master’s
Hometown: Seattle
Instrument: Bass trombone
How long he’s been playing: Since seventh grade
Why trombone? “I think the story of every trombone player is there are too many trumpet players. So the band director usually gestures to the trumpet section and says, ‘We need more people in the low brass. Is anybody interested?’”
9:02 a.m.
Lauren Coburn
Year: Freshman
Hometown: Ashland, Va.
Instrument: Cello
How long she’s been playing: Since fifth grade
Do you have to be in an orchestra at IU? “Yeah, you have to. You audition as soon as you get here, like Welcome Week, and then you’re put in for the whole year. So then every year, you re-audition for a different seat.”
We called the Jacobs School of Music to clarify. “Every music major must participate in an ensemble appropriate to his or her major,” says Andrea Schiebel from the school’s undergraduate office. Students are in bands, orchestras, or wherever their instrument fits.
10:15 a.m.
Inha Kim
Year: First year of master’s
Hometown: Seoul, South Korea
Instrument: Cello
How long she’s been playing: Since she was 11.
Inha Kim finds room 228, and peeks in the small square window. Wearing a navy blue Marc Jacobs shirt dress, she carries her cello and starts preparing for practice. A native of Seoul, North Korea, Inha came to IU with her husband, who is a student in the Kelley School of Business.
Inha has been playing the cello since she was 11 years old, and has studied music in Germany and Korea. She says she was lucky IU had a strong music school.
“I knew that at IU the music school is very good,” she says. “And, especially, Janos Starker is very famous for cello.”
As a master’s student in her second semester, Inha now studies with Starker, an internationally renowned cellist and Grammy Award winner who was also the former principal cellist for the Metropolitan Opera.
Inha says there are not enough practice rooms for the four hours of practicing she puts in each day. She also wishes there were more music lectures for students. But those are her only complaints.
“The music school is a very big part of IU. And we have a great, great faculty,” she says. “And we have great concerts almost every week.”
While Inha practices, Rose Fraser waits outside. She’s about to kick Inha out because it’s 11:15 a.m., her time to practice. Rose has room 228 reserved Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 11:15 a.m. to 12:15 p.m., and room 224 reserved at the same time on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. It’s a strategy music students take advantage of to beat the shortage of rooms.
“One of the things that we do differently than our competitor schools is that we actually schedule times for students to have a set number of hours per week in the rooms,” says Jacobs Executive Associate Dean Eugene O’Brien.
He says students base their practice times on their registration date and degree.
11:15 a.m.
Rose Fraser
Year: Sophomore
Hometown: Woodbridge, Va.
Instrument: Clarinet
How long she’s been playing: Since she was 12
What are you hoping to do after Jacobs? “I’ll probably go to grad school. I mean, in this day and age, most musicians who are getting jobs are master’s or doctoral graduates. It’s possible to get a job straight out of undergrad, but you have to be incredibly talented. It’s really unusual.”
In the afternoon light, the walls are the color of aqua toothpaste.
11:55 a.m.
Josiah Coe
Year: Junior
Hometown: Atlanta
Instrument: Viola
How long he’s been playing: Strings since he was four, viola for four years
Favorite artists: Coldplay, U2, Bon Iver, Kings of Leon
Josiah Coe, a dark-haired violist, arrives and says he’s preparing for his ensemble practice. He immediately sets to work hunting and gathering music stands and extra chairs, poking his head in rooms and returning with stands in both hands. He’s focused now, but just a few months ago he prepared to leave IU.
“I wasn’t seeing how music could help me help people in any way,” he says. “I was spending hours a day in a little room by myself and when I got out of there, I was tired and I just went home and went to bed.”
Josiah wanted to study something that would give him a platform to help people. He planned to study international affairs and had already applied to the University of Georgia and received a full scholarship. When he went home to Atlanta during Thanksgiving break, his grandmother, who is from the Philippines, told him a story that changed his perceptions.
During WWII and the U.S. occupation of the Philippines until 1946, Josiah’s once-wealthy family was homeless.
“My family had lost all of their possessions, and their house was used as a Japanese military camp,” Josiah says. “They were literally walking around for years.”
The family found one camp where musicians played for anyone who would dance.
“For my grandma, she spoke of the story really fondly. It was really warm,” he says. “People were there and were able to dance as if there was no war. Musicians kind of alleviated the severity and pressure of death and the destruction that ravaged their homes.”
Josiah knew he could stay at IU and be a source of relief for those who heard his music.
“You do what you’re good at in order to help people,” he says. “You don’t have to be Mother Theresa. Nothing really changed with how I viewed music, but how I viewed service kind of changed. It helped change the reason for why I’m playing music.”
His own questions satisfied, Josiah focused on spontaneous kindness. He decided to bring students closer by feeding them Filipino food. He and a friend stayed up late to make three huge trays of pancit long noodles, as well as more than 100 egg rolls. For four hours, he stood inside the music practice building and fed everyone who passed by.
“We weren’t allowed to serve an official lunch, so I said to people, ‘This is my lunch, do you want to have some?’”
Outside of the practice room, a friend walks by and asks Josiah if he is using the space. “Those are my chairs and my things, and I will fight you for them,” he says, laughing. While waiting, his phone rings. His group doesn’t need to practice, they just need to talk. Josiah leaves the room he’s spent 25 minutes staking out.
They’ll practice later, he says. As he hustles away, a woman walks up and enters the room.
She grabs the two extra stands and puts them outside the door. As she starts warming up her voice, the cellist’s bowing next door drowns her out.
12:20 p.m.
Mary Cloud
Year: Junior
Hometown: Atlanta
Major: Voice
How long she’s been singing: Seven years
Favorite singer: Opera singer Maria Callas
1:03 p.m.
John Leszczynski
Year: Senior
Hometown: Fort Wayne
Instrument: Saxophone
How long he’s been playing: Since fourth grade
John Leszczynski wants to play saxophone for the president, even if it means going through boot camp. He studies both saxophone and composition, and is preparing for auditions for one of the four special army bands. Musicians don’t get a break from basic training, according to the United States Military Academy Band Web site. Even if John is a musician, he’ll need to maintain the appropriate weight, pass fitness and rifle tests, and train for combat for nine weeks.
“I don’t think I’d relish it,” John says about basic training, “but I’m already pretty in shape.”
John is tall, thin, and a wizard with the saxophone. When he walks into the practice room, he turns off his cell phone, takes out his instrument, and starts playing long tones, or holding one note to work on tone quality.
To the un-classically-trained ear, he might as well be on stage backing John Coltrane. He’s practiced enough to warrant that sound. His regimen demands at least three hours of practice a day in between his music classes, for a total of about six hours of playing each day. He says he has arrived at the practice rooms when it was still dark outside, then left the music school after sunset.
On March 3, he will attend the North American Saxophone Alliance conference in Athens, Ga. There he will perform and compete. He will also hear an ensemble perform a piece he wrote. The song is called “They Might Be Gods,” and it is a sarcastic piece that juxtaposes intense technical runs with awkward dissonant dances, he says.
He says he hopes his music will reach larger audiences. He appreciates when students who don’t study music attend Jacobs performances, even if they don’t have a trained understanding of the composition.
“Music majors are so used to everything here, it’s not as special. We understand it more on a technical level,” John says of those who study music, “but people can still enjoy it. We’re probably enjoying it in a different way.”
2:58 p.m.
Anna Chesson, Sangwoo Kim, Bo Yoon Choi, and Susanna Johnson.
Year: All freshmen
Instrument: String quartet
As the sky darkens, the walls look sea foam green.
4:01 p.m.
Loralee Culbert
Hometown: Fairfax, Va.
Major: Music
Year: Senior
What she’s practicing: Voice (although she also plays the piano and organ)
Years singing: 11
“I prefer to practice in the mornings, but usually practicing is crammed between other activities, when I have a chance,” she says. “Organ rooms are on the third floor, but I prefer the second floor for voice and piano. And I accompany a few singers so we usually rehearse on the second floor.”
4:25 p.m.
“I only have five minutes to practice,” says a student approaching room 228. No time for questions, no time for a name. He’s “the five-minute guy.” And then, at exactly 4:30 p.m., he’s gone.
4:39 p.m.
Nathaniel Baron-Schmitt
Hometown: Bloomington
Year: Bloomington High School South senior
Instrument: Piano. He’s practicing before a lesson with Dr. Karen Taylor, director of the Jacobs School of Music’s Young Pianists Program.
Years playing: Nine
6:20 p.m.
Mary Poole enters, switching from the room to the left into room 228.
Home state: Georgia
Year: Junior
What she’s practicing: Clarinet
Years playing: Nine
Interesting fact: She befriended the janitor in order to stay in the practice room past midnight (when the practice rooms close). Instead of leaving, she would turn off the light and sit in the room until the halls were clear.
