December 3, 2007
Eastman senior to study in United Kingdom as Marshall
Scholar
david.andreatta@rochester.edu
Rachel Kincaid
As a composer with a conscience, Eastman School senior
Rachel Kincaid has impressed musicians around the world. Now her passion
for melding music and social justice has won over judges of the prestigious
Marshall Scholarships.
The 21-year-old trumpet player and applied music major
has been named a Marshall Scholar, and guaranteed herself two years of
fully funded study in the United Kingdom to write music that she hopes will
move her audience to confront social ills. Kincaid, who underwent a
rigorous screening process conducted by a committee of faculty and
administrators to secure a nomination for the scholarship, is the first
University student to be named a Marshall Scholar since 1988.
“I want to use music to expand people’s
way of thinking, to make them think about something that they
wouldn’t otherwise,” says Kincaid, who cites Krzysztof
Penderecki’s Threnody for the
Victims of Hiroshima among her inspirations.
“No one can listen to that piece and know the
title and not think about the moral implications of using nuclear
technology,” she adds. “Whether it changes people’s
opinions or not, it at least makes them think about it.”
“As someone whose intelligence, creativity, and
drive know no bounds, Rachel represents the best of what the University has
to offer,” says President Seligman. “The faculty and
administrators who have worked with her have been aware of these attributes
for some time, and we are delighted they have been recognized by the
Marshall Scholarships judges.”
Established in 1953 by the British Parliament as a
gesture to the United States for assistance received after World War II
under the Marshall Plan, the scholarship program awards two years of study
at any university in the United Kingdom to American undergraduates and
recent college graduates.
Ray Raymond, chairman of the New York Marshall
Regional Selection Committee, calls Kincaid’s musical compositions
“strikingly original, socially relevant sound pictures.”
“Rachel Kincaid is an exceptional young composer
and musician, and we are thrilled to have her as a Marshall Scholar,”
Raymond says. “Rachel has that rare combination of academic and
personal excellence, outstanding academic ability, grace, modesty, and
maturity. Her potential is limitless.”
Kincaid will begin a one-year master’s degree
program in trumpet performance next fall at the Royal Northern College of
Music in Manchester, England, and start work on a second master’s
degree in music composition the following year at the Royal Scottish
Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, Scotland.
The journey will not be her first studying music
abroad. Kincaid spent last year at the renowned Freiburg Musikhochschule in
Germany through the Eastman Conservatory Exchange Program, an experience
that led Swiss music publisher Editions BIM to agree to publish six of her
compositions and future works.
A native of Wooster, Ohio, Kincaid was well into
high school before she considered studying music in college in addition to
pursing a political science degree.
“Most students at Eastman knew by the time they
were 10 that they wanted to be musicians,” Kincaid says. “I
didn’t think about it until I was a junior in high school.”
The opportunity to study in Germany last year prompted
Kincaid to forgo a degree in political science, but an interest in public
policy and social responsibility forged six years ago on a family visit to
Guatemala remains intact.
“It was an eye-opening experience,”
Kincaid says of the 2001 trip. “The hotel was magnificent with
gardens and fountains, but on the next street windows had barbed wire on
them and you could sense there was a lot of violence.”
She plans to spend time over her career performing aid
work and teaching music in developing countries. The experience, she hopes,
will enable her to study native musical traditions and integrate them into
her own music as a way of connecting her audiences to various cultures.
“Music is not just art for art’s sake for
Rachel,” says Belinda Redden, director of fellowships in the College
Center for Academic Support, who helped Kincaid prepare for her pursuit of
the Marshall Scholarship. “She wants to be exposed to the larger
world in a very serious way. This is not somebody paying lip service to a
noble concept.”
| Previous story | Next story |
