Hi! My name is Rosie Rion and I am an undergraduate cello performance major at Syracuse University's Setnor School of music. I am from a small town in southern New York named Krumville, located 20 minutes southwest of Woodstock in the Catskill Mountains. At the age of five, I was given piano lessons as a birthday gift, and my musical career began. In third grade, I was recommended to learn an instrument with one of the Bennett Elementary School large ensembles. I chose the cello and played in my first orchestra under the direction of Katie Jeannotte from third through sixth grade. Along the way, I realized that cello was my primary instrument and dropped the piano lessons in exchange for private cello instruction. However, it took me until seventh grade to find a teacher I was happy with and could take lessons with consistently. That teacher was Ling Kwan, who taught

many of the young cellists in my area. Under her instruction and with the encouragement of my high school orchestra director, Winni Paetow, I started competing annually in the NYSSMA solo competitions. In eighth grade I did my first level six piece and it soon became a goal of mine to someday get a level six perfect score so that I could play with the All State orchestra. A couple of years later I began to write my own music. I had always enjoyed arranging songs my orchestra friends and I knew so that we could play them together, but tenth grade was when I wrote my first completely original piece, the first movement to a symphony. Realizing that composing and conducting were two new sides to music that I enjoyed very much, I began to write other pieces so as to have a portfolio when I went to college. During these years I also had a band that I played with regularly called Mango!, which consisted of electric violin, viola, and cello and a drummer. We covered classic rock songs like Led Zeppelin's Kashmir and The Rolling Stones' Paint It Black and developed quite a following in the local Woodstock area. This provided inspiration for me to find my personal compositional style in crossing rock and classical music. It also provided me with a way of practicing how to write for those instruments. I continued working on my technique as a cellist all through high school and in my junior year I managed to get the level six perfect score at NYSSMA, which qualified me to play in the New York State All State Orchestra in my senior year. All State was a life changing experience that inspired me to work even harder at becoming the best cellist and all around musician I possibly could. Since then, I was accepted into Syracuse University and have been studying cello with Gregory Wood . I have also studied composition with Dr. Nicholas Scherzinger and Dr. Daniel Godfrey, and I am currently studying with Dr. Andrew Waggoner. I have had many great opportunities to perform and to have my compositions performed by others at Syracuse and I look forward to continuing my musical studies there.