Alice Tao

My junior year of high school was the first time that I ever read the novel T
he Awakening.
Edna was a married grown woman living in Louisiana in the 1800s, and yet I could see myself, a
teenage girl living in the 21st century, in her character. She spends her time listening to
performances from her friend Mademoiselle Reisz, seeking emotional and spiritual fulfillment
from the cognisance of this music. The role of music as a catalyst for Ednas awakening reveals
itself when she observes, A thousand emotions have swept through me tonight... I wonder if I
shall ever be stirred again as Mademoiselle Reiszs playing moved me tonight. In this scene, I
saw myself, the musician, seated before the woman. I felt an immediate reassurance in my
artistic abilities to evoke emotion through a single work, even one composed by another
individual.
I returned to the nursing home in Brooklyn in 2005 where my sister and I stood a little
over three feet tall. We sang and we strummed, we hit keys and we pulled bows across strings.
But the reactions exceeded far beyond the physical work that we had input into our practice and
performance. Those notes had more than sound; they had tone and emoted so many stories in
a simple phrase. Even as children we possessed some level of musicality that could only be
present in humans, the natural tendency of soul and that courageous soul required of an artist.
In that moment, I could see in Edna the same artistic inspiration I saw myself offering.
In a violin lesson with my teacher last year my vision about my role as an influential
musician was once again reshaped. We were studying an extremely contemporary piece
composed by Elliott Carter, and she asked me to read a paper written as an analysis of the
personalities in the music. The player of the song would be required to portray three contrasting
characters within the piece, which jumped from one legato persona to a jumpy, loud persona. I
remembered once more the imaginative manner in which Edna visualized portraits when

listening to Reiszs music. I saw, in hopes, the same imagination drawing three different
individuals in the Carter piece I was to perform in the spring. The lesson had given me the ability
to expand my vision of the song and how I would hope to depict the storyline that the composer
had meant to be represented.