MIT

Beyond my busy life at school, I compose and perform music as a way to channel my creativity to escape the rigidity of my course curriculum through improvisation. When I was eight years old — after years of school-mandated recorder classes — I begged my mum to let me graduate to the clarinet. I spent hours each day practicing scales and climbing the grade ladder in Classical music. But I found myself gravitating towards the sounds of jazz — and the opportunities for improvisation that the genre provided. Through secondary school, I continued practicing my favorite jazz short pieces,…