Arvid Tomayko-Peters
College Essay I

Finally, we were on. We hurled a wall of percussive ethnic sound at the audience: timbales, djembes, congas, guitars, bass, trumpet, maracas, sax and voices. I ran, ducked, leaped and bounded musically through the Samba Jam, a jazz influenced Latin samba infused with the energy of a deceptively simple 2-chord harmonic structure. I reacted and pushed forward my own ideas in my trumpet solo, surged sound through the melody line in inverted cannon with the guitar player. It was the Clothesline Concert of 2002, our culminating performance of the year. I was playing with the Nauset High School World Music Ensemble in an effort to raise money for awareness and prevention of domestic violence.
“Here in this group we have people who get 800s on their SATs and people who don’t even take them,” said Lisa Brown, the director of the World Music Ensemble, to the audience, “We have all types of kids and they all come together to play this music.” True, the people who made up the ensemble had very different priorities, but when the 16 of us came together to play, either outside, in Ms. Brown’s classroom space, or on stage, all the differences disappeared. Everyone’s musical ideas were legitimate; each person had an indispensable function in the music. After rehearsals every Monday and Wednesday, we were like a family.
My experiences with the group are a metaphor for my life as a whole. The World Music Ensemble is like me: I have so many different interests, so many different facets that make up me. I enjoy mathematics, science, music, film, history, visual art and reading. I participate in coastal science research projects, play music from Classical to Jazz to Experimental Hip-Hop and beyond, make animation films, visit cutting edge art shows and have fun integrating functions in calculus. I dabble in computer graphics and study the history of the Cathar heresy in medieval France. Just like the different people in the World Music Ensemble, my interests are plentiful and varied. In the World Music Ensemble, we are able to take on a project and bring it to a performance level. This is also my challenge. I must bring together my myriad interests and my curiosity and integrate them into a definitive life passion. I think going to Brown can help me to achieve this goal.
In school I have taken mostly honors and A.P. classes; therefore most of my classroom interactions have been with students who are very academically motivated. I have found, however, that working with a more diverse group of students is also very stimulating. Playing in the World Music Ensemble has been a new type of collaborative discourse that is equally rich and has brought me closer in touch with my own varied self.

Arvid Tomayko-Peters •• Squish the Squid Productions

Ouch! To email me, please enable Javascript or upgrade your browser.