For many high school seniors, the college application process can be stressful and tedious to perfect essay prompts & polish resumés. However, for senior Sam Christian, he had a little more work cut out for him, auditioning for music schools. Since his childhood, Christian’s passion ran deep for the performing arts and music, so when application season came around, Christian had one school in mind – Berklee College of Music. In addition to his college application, Christian had a meticulous audition process involved when he applied to Berklee.
“I auditioned for the piano and walked into the room to play my prepared piece Arabesque No. 1,” he said.
The process tested his musical aptitude in various disciplines.
“I had to improv over a jazz track, and they didn’t give me sheet music, so I had to guess what chords they were playing. After that, I had to do rhythm and sing melodies,” Christian said.
Christian was grateful that the audition was relatively easy for him. He found the interview fun because he got to talk to someone about his passion for music & future aspirations.
Christian has played musical instruments since elementary school, but his music career and desire to compose music skyrocketed throughout high school. His compositions helped guide him to pursue music and apply to Berklee, even though he was still uncertain.
Subsequently, his acceptance into Berklee made him really excited.
“My private teacher said I could get in, [but] I didn’t believe her,” Christian said. “I thought I had a chance to get in, but I didn’t want to be too confident, because I feel like that would have made my audition worse.”
Christian believes his extreme passion for piano and music composition throughout high school, with his heavy participation in band, got him accepted to Berklee. Christian auditioned for piano because it’s his strongest instrument.
He had the special opportunity to tour Berklee and the city of Boston after his audition.
“I love Boston. It’s such a beautiful city. One of my friends, Miles Gelman, was here last year. He’s there, and I’m so excited to see him.” Christian said.
A major pull factor for his choice of school was the limitless possibilities for success in the music world because of all the talented musicians that coalesce at Berklee. Ironically enough, Christian notes that a better indicator of Berklee’s success is the dropout rate because it means students have already made it in the music scene. Regardless of that, Berklee will give him the best shot at his dreams.
“I want to do songwriting, and I feel like Berklee just gives you the most potential to do it,” he said.
Christian’s ultimate goal in life is to be successful enough to tour the world and travel to every single country he can. Even if he had all the money in the world, his passion for music still shines through because he also intends to privately teach kids in the future.
“If I make money from music, I’m gonna have a lot of free time,” Christian said. “I’ve always thought about teaching people music, and if I just use all of my talent and don’t give back, then [it’s] stupid.”
He’s looking forward to his time in Boston because he knows a great music career awaits him when he arrives. Christian is grateful to all the people who’ve supported him and has one piece of advice for anyone wanting to pursue music.
“If you have a passion for something that people think is dumb, you should do it anyway,” Christian said. “You should totally chase after what you want, as long as it doesn’t hurt you.”
