Practice pays off for Fairview High violinist
By Kevin Kelley
Fairview Park
Published Dec. 21, 2005

Waddell

"How do you get to Carnegie Hall?"

The punchline to that old vaudeville joke is "practice."

But for Fairview High senior Jessica Waddell, it's no joke. She'll be playing the violin next month at the famed New York City concert hall, which opened in 1891.

Waddell, who has been playing the violin for the past eight years, will take the stage at Carnegie Hall Jan. 16 as a member of the National Festival Orchestra. Now in its 10th year, the orchestra was founded with the mission of identifying talented music students from across the country and providing them with an intensive orchestral training opportunity in New York.

Participants are selected through taped auditions and represent the finest music programs in the country. National Festival Orchestra performers have come from every state in America and have gone on to attend prestigious music schools and perform as professionals.

Fairview High School orchestra members have performed with the National Festival Orchestra in previous years, and director Julie Maskow informs students of the competition each year. Waddell played a selection from Mozart for her audition tape, which she submitted in April. She learned she was selected during the summer.

"I had no idea what my chances were," Waddell said. "I figured hundreds of kids were applying. When I found out that I got in, I was so excited about it."

The National Festival Orchestra will be performing Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5 under the direction of Benjamin Zander, who has served as the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra for 26 seasons. Zander, who also has also conducted the Philharmonia Orchestra of London, is a faculty member at the New England Conservatory, where he teaches and conducts the youth philharmonic orchestra.

Waddell, who will travel to New York City with her parents and brother Jason, will practice with fellow members all weekend long as well as all day Monday in preparation for the Monday evening concert. She and other members have received sheet music and are expected to practice in the weeks leading up to the concert.

New York City may soon be Waddell's second home as she hopes to attend New York University and major in accounting with a minor in music.

Waddell has been active with youth orchestras at Baldwin-Wallace College's Conservatory of Music for five years. She currently practices every Saturday morning with the Baldwin-Wallace Senior Youth Orchestra, which performs three concerts each year.

What's more amazing is that the violin isn't even the 17-year-old's main instrument -- the piano is.

"But I've taken up violin over the years," she said.