Sophomore Charlotte Yeh has been accepted to play at the Carnegie Hall in New York. Playing violin for almost a decade after starting at the age of five, she has accomplished many challenges and obstacles that a musician can achieve. 

Carnegie Hall is a famous historic hall where musician’s play. Orchestral music is one type of music that is played there, but there are other types of music like jazz, concert and many more that are also performed in the hall.

“I recorded a video of me playing with an accompanist, and I submitted that,” Yeh expressed, “and they chose a few winners out of all the submissions chosen.” She does not remember how many submissions there were in the competition, but she has expressed that she is happy for being one of the winners of the competition. Her parents and her private tutor helped her get into the competition to play at Carnegie. 

Yeh was from a small town in Connecticut. She started by taking cheap violin lessons. Yeh tells the story of the aspiration of starting to play the violin. “My Parents asked ‘would you like to play?’ and I think I said sure.” Since then, she has played the violin in the school’s orchestra and solo work in the span of a decade.

Junior Peter Mai explains that he is proud of Yeh’s accomplishments in the orchestra. “She can do basically anything,” Mai expressed, “if she thinks of a technique that would be more difficult to utilize yet makes a piece sound better. She will always work towards doing that.” He thinks of her as a prodigy and that she has accomplished so much as a sophomore in high school.

There were times too when being a musician was tough for Yeh. Lack of confidence and needing to understand the pieces being placed together could be overwhelming as a musician. Yeh explained her drawbacks: “As a musician, you always face things like pieces you can’t play yet or difficult passages that you can’t get but keep doing it over and over and you will get it eventually.” 

Orchestra Director Dr. Valorie Dopp expressed that Yeh is devoted to the pieces that she is working on. “She is devoted, she works very hard,” Dopp said, “She practices a lot. She is working on the standard violin repertoire, which is a lot of romantic concertos and things that are famous works.” Examples of a famous works are the Mendel Violin Concerto.

The song that Yeh will be playing at Carnegie Hall is the Barber Violin Concerto on Dec. 28 in New York. She has been preparing to play for the big moment when going onto the stage to perform with a huge crowd. Yeh has been practicing a lot to feel ready and at ease.

With having those accomplishments and people surrounding Yeh, she has proven to be a prodigy of her own. Pushing on with her talents and her abilities to take on challenging pieces, she will be prepared to go onto the big stage in New York.