“Music is the only thing I’m good at. It’s the thing that I loved most in high school and middle school, and I was lucky enough to get a scholarship. I started on oboe, and I was pretty bad at it. Then one day in seventh grade, my band director was like: ‘Who wants to play bassoon?’ and I was like: ‘I don’t know what that is, but sure! I’ll give a go!’ I thought it was awesome and badass, and I really liked playing it. Because I was playing the bassoon, which is a really rare instrument, I was able to get spots in honor youth orchestras when I was 13. It was really cool and it made me learn really quickly.
One of my absolute favorite memories and turning points in my life was when I was 13, I was taking pitching lessons for baseball. My dad loved taking me to my pitching lessons and he loved that I played sports. One day, I went up to him and I was crying and I said: ‘Dad, I want to take bassoon lessons instead.’ And that was a major turning point in my life because we had a huge talk about music versus sports and I just remember really wanting to play the bassoon. The rest is history, I suppose.”
-Devin Dolquist, senior