Following is the personal story of Alice Hodgkins, a cello student of Kellie Burgess:

I remember my mother pointing out a boy playing a violin at church one Sunday, and telling me I was going to play something like that, except bigger.  I couldn’t quite comprehend how you could prop something much bigger under your chin, but I believed her, and when I was told few weeks later that it was time for my first cello lesson, I thundered down the stairs in excitement.  I was five years old.  I’ve been taking lessons here at the Music Academy ever since.

It wasn’t always easy. In middle school I often wanted to quit, but my mother persevered and made me continue my lessons, join different strings groups, and even leave my much-loved school for a year to attend an arts magnet school.  I didn’t understand why she kept at it so much. Cello was nice, but I would rather do other things, I told her.  Anyway, I really wasn’t that good.  Finally, though, as I got into high school I began to understand.  I would be practicing, under duress, and at the end of the piece one of my parent’s heads would pop around the corner.  “That sounded really good, Alice,” they’d tell me, and I’d know by the look of surprise that it wasn’t just the obligatory parental encouragement I’d been hearing all my life.  I would grin, and play the piece again.  And lately, I’ve begun to discover it also.  I’ll hear a note ring, or a melody build under my fingers, and I’ll realize.  I’m not just playing the cello anymore.  My cello and I are making music.  I play at church sometimes now, and when people come up to thank me later, I know what they mean when they tell me how much they love the cello, because finally, I do too.  I know why this was worth it to my mother.  All her persistence, which I hated at the time, was a gift.

But even now, it is not necessarily easy, just complicated.  About a year ago I started to work on the Prelude to Bach’s first cello suite, and by this point that piece has become a person to me.  It’s absolute genius, and I have a great love for it which is strong and unrequited.  As much as I try I can never seem to play it as I want.  This doesn’t mean I haven’t performed it, because I have: at recitals, at parties, and even at a One City, One Book planning meeting.  Yet it continues to frustrate me.  It taunts me with my inability to match the music issuing from my strings to the rhapsody in my head, and I pick up my bow and fiercely try again. The other day a friend who saw me play it told me that at that moment I was the most serious she had ever seen me.  It’s true.  The Bach and I have serious relationship.  One that’s rather fraught with tension.  I will not give up, though.  Of all the melody, harmony, and resonating chords in the world, a tiny corner of it belongs to me.  I have music in my fingers, all my own, to share.

Much of that is due to this place, and the people here.  Kellie Burgess has been my teacher for almost thirteen years now.  Since I’ve known her she’s gotten engaged, gotten married, and had two kids.  Since she’s known me, I’ve, well, I’ve grown up.  From five to eighteen is a long way.  There has been a lot of music, but for years now in our lessons, we talk as much as we play.  She’s my friend.  She puts up with my tears, and lets me babysit her kids.  Who could ask for better than that?  Also, I love the Music Academy.  It is, after my home, one of the places I feel most comfortable.  It is filled with familiar faces, comfortable couches, and leaking music.  My choir teacher at school has a huge banner in the back of her room which says “Home is where your song is!”  And that’s true, this is home. But I plan bring that song and my cello along to college next year, and wherever I end up after that.

— Alice Hodgkins