When I was in high school, I had to decide between pursuing a career in computer programming or in professional tuba playing. On the advice of my tuba teacher, I chose computer science. In college, finished all the requirements for my major by my junior year, so I took music classes and got interested in composition. I graduated with two majors.<\/p>\n
I started a professional career in computer programming, the plan I chose for economic reasons. It wasn’t long before I realized that studying computer science is interesting, but day-to-day programming is not. I had a hard time fitting in the culture of Silicon Valley. When I got laid off in 2001, I considered making a career change to music, but as a composer, rather than as a tuba player.<\/p>\n
Last spring I attended the Composing a Career Conference sponsored by the Women’s Philharmonic. Almost everyone else there had a masters degree and the presenters all assumed they were speaking to a masters-level audience. Realizing I needed more education, I started looking into graduate programs. Yours caught my interest because of your faculty, especially Alvin Lucier whose music I greatly admire and who has been one of my influences.<\/p>\n
In the spring of 2001, I collaborated on an installation in the Exploratorium (a hands-on science museum in San Francisco) based on Lucier’s piece I am Sitting in a Room<\/i>. I’ve used similar decay loops, based on Lucier’s piece, for other pieces of music and will sometimes annoy my neighbors by setting up my computer to run such a delay loop until it finds the resonant frequency of the building and starts to shake the walls.<\/p>\n
Lucier’s approaches to music are fascinating and appeal to my engineering background as well as my musical background. I know I could greatly professionally benefit by studying with him. I think my engineering and musical background is a good match.<\/p>\n
I’ve heard many excellent things about your school. One of your alums, Judy Dunaway, encouraged me to apply. I hope you will consider me for your program.<\/p>\n
Weak ending. Any feedback to this draft is highly encouraged. Too kiss-upy? Lucier is like a god or something, for real. When I did that thing at the Exploritorium, we also put contact micorphones on a bunch of the exhibits and amplified them. A guy on another project came by and ironically said, “Ah, so I see you’re a little<\/b> influenced by Lucier.” The alum I mention was his personal assistant or something. I just sent her email today, since she told me to talk to her before applying.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Statement of purpose — Wesleyan When I was in high school, I had to decide between pursuing a career in computer programming or in professional tuba playing. On the advice of my tuba teacher, I chose computer science. In college, finished all the requirements for my major by my junior year, so I took music … Continue reading <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[314,76,126],"class_list":["post-2035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-applications","tag-celesteh","tag-grad-school"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2035"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4288,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2035\/revisions\/4288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}