As told by Abigail Fisher
I have felt seen for who I am at UVU because of the support from my professors, peers, and colleagues that I've met while studying here.
Photo by Emily Muñoz
Making music a career is a battle that a lot of musicians face — like, “How am I going to support myself in the future?” I applied to several colleges, and I felt like I was most seen for who I was at UVU. I've had so many experiences at UVU that have helped my resume grow, which will make me really employable and a really valuable musician to go into grad school. That will open up more possibilities.
UVU is a place to thrive. I've had so many opportunities since I came to UVU to study music. I was able to solo [Vivaldi’s] Four Seasons with the chamber orchestra and three other violinists, I got my first solo experience in Bulgaria with the Violin Sinfonia, and then, of course, the Carnegie Hall debut with my piano trio.
It was, I want to say, the summer of my eighth- or ninth-grade year when I went to the University of Utah for their summer music workshop. There, they had their graduate students playing Brahms’ Piano Trio No. 3 in C minor. It was so beautiful and so complicated, and ever since I heard them perform that, I knew that was a piece I wanted to play.
When I came to UVU, I saw my opportunity. I was like, “This is my chance — I get to play my favorite piece ever.” I found [UVU students] Maren Daynes and Noah Guzman, who are really great musicians, in a class called Small Ensembles, and they hopped on board with this challenging piece.
As a musician, in general, working with other people, you all have different ideas for how the piece should sound. That's just a learning experience that you always get. Working with multiple musicians is learning from what they think and then taking what you think and putting it together, debating it out, and playing it back and forth until you come to a unifying decision.
So, learning how to make those decisions together, even if among ourselves, we had differing opinions and choices, we had to learn how to collaborate and actually make the music cohesive — and that was pretty fun.
Maren is really into competitions, and I was initially so scared. A competition was the last thing on my mind, but she pulled out competitions that we ended up preparing for and entering, and we won awards for three out of four of them.
The American Protégé International Music Competition was one of the competitions my piano trio won, and we were invited to perform live at Carnegie Hall. Of course, we couldn't turn that down. So, the three of us, to fund the trip, put together a fundraiser recital and invited as many people as we could. Because of that, we were able to receive a lot of donations to help us pay for the expense of going all the way to New York City around Christmas time. When we got there, it was super busy. It was chaos, but the three of us were able to meet up together and rehearse a couple of times right before, just to get the nerves out and know that this was really happening.
We got to rehearse at a studio across the street from Juilliard, so of course, we
just got to wander around and see our dream school. It was such a beautiful, beautiful
place. The night of the concert, we got to meet all of the American Protégé people
who put the program together. They were so proud of us and so supportive. They just
made us feel right at home. The concert hall was the most beautiful hall I'd ever
been in. It was spectacular. The acoustics were so clean — you didn't even have to
work for it; you just play your heart out, and it just carries through. It was the
most beautiful, beautiful hall I'd ever been in.
I was seven months pregnant when we went to Carnegie Hall. At that point in my pregnancy, I had really bad water retention and carpal tunnel syndrome. My fingers would go numb after 30 seconds of playing. So, at that point, I was just crossing my fingers, hoping I could remember it [my piece].
I popped all of the Tylenol I could to numb the pain that was already pretty numbing, and during that performance, I couldn't feel my fingers. I'm so glad that I had my husband there with me. He was able to help massage my hands out and take really good care of me, so I wasn't more stressed than I needed to be, and I was able to make it through. And I think I played really well.
We accomplished the greatest task — not only for professional musicians, but to be college musicians, and to get that opportunity is phenomenal. You don't realize that all of your efforts can actually amount to that. Like a gold star on your resume that everyone will look at and ask questions about, and you get to say, “Yes, I did it.”
I have felt seen for who I am at UVU because of the support from my professors, peers, and colleagues that I've met while studying here. And honestly, I'm just so happy that I'm able to continue finishing my bachelor's at UVU, and I really hope to finish my master’s. I see myself auditioning for a professional symphony one day, such as the Utah Symphony, perhaps.
To be able to really shoot for the stars and be playing violin is just a miracle for being from my family in the first place.
My mom was born and raised in Lima, Peru, so I still have a lot of family over there, and they came to Utah when she was about 17 or 18 years old. None of my aunts and uncles from Peru were able to finish college, and so that was a goal of my mom's, to make sure that all of her kids would go to college.
To have made it so far and play at Carnegie Hall and to be given all of these leadership opportunities at UVU, it's like anyone can do it. It's possible no matter your background, no matter the opposing forces in your life — it's totally possible. I think for my family, it's given a lot of my cousins who are still younger the chance to be like, “Wow, we can actually do that; we can go that far.”
