Vivian Murphy
(West St Paul, MN)

from Minnesota Youth Symphonies, performing Symphonie Espagnole, Movement 4 composed by Edouard Lalo.

Artistic Statement

Performing is a personal experience for me. I love music; I want to help others discover the beauty that might be unknown to them and make my audience enjoy music as I do. I feel irresistibly compelled to share the beauty I find in music, and I love being able to express myself at the same time. For me, performing holds the same joy one feels in sharing a wonderful experience with friends. It's thrilling to be able to touch people intimately, conveying ideas and emotions using a medium more powerful than words. I love its novelty, too _ every performance holds something new, and the music comes alive in a different way each time you perform it. You notice things about the piece you didn't before, and you can make the music uniquely your own, while still conveying the thoughts of the composer. Performers are like authors _ both are able to take thoughts and ideas and portray them in beautiful ways. They feel and become each mood and character evoked in music, to more clearly express them. The difference is that musicians tell their stories with sound. I am fascinated by the ability a lucky few have to craft characters, worlds, and plotlines that evoke such strong feelings in their readers; but performing music does the same thing for me in an intimate and novel way. A quote by Arthur O'Shaughnessy beautifully expresses this faculty peculiar to musicians: "We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams".

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