Eager to learn about jazz, but with limited access, I traveled for hours each week to attend one of the few jam sessions in Taiwan. I would stay late into the night, listening to musicians play and trying to absorb everything I could. For six months before coming to the United States, this became my routine. I was determined to understand a music that felt so alive, even though I had no formal teacher to guide me. I have always tried to find jazz on YouTube, but I never had someone who truly knew jazz to teach me. Instead, I taught myself by listening carefully, mimicking the sounds I heard, and integrating them into my own compositions. Jazz became more than just music to me—it became a way to express myself and share light with others. Even after I transferred to the United States last year to study music composition, I continued to surround myself with people who love jazz and to learn from every opportunity I could find.
Growing up homeschooling, and being self-taught in jazz and pop, made me passionate about education. I believe education is the key to the prosperity of a person, a home, and a nation. With the development of AI, creativity and the arts will become more and more important. I believe education in the future cannot only focus on technique and knowledge, but rather on creativity and critical thinking. Jazz, in particular, is one of the best ways for future generations to develop creativity. In jazz, one can do whatever he or she wants—there are almost no limits. In fact, jazz encourages people to break limits and explore new sounds. A jazz musician is a natural creator, constantly thinking about how to make simple material more interesting. With so many benefits to learning this genre, it sometimes still surprises me how little access many people have to jazz. To many, it is still a mystery. That is why I want to create a YouTube channel that promotes jazz, pop, classical, and Chinese music, showing how these styles can be fused together while fostering interest and passion for music.
Being involved in both jazz and classical music has also shaped how I see the world. It makes me sad to see that people from these two musical worlds sometimes do not appreciate each other’s work, even though their approaches are not as different as they might think. So much of this division could be resolved if people simply set aside their prejudices and try to understand another perspective. Like many things in life, people often judge those who are different from them. Having been born and raised in Taiwan and now studying in the United States, I have experienced both the beauty and the differences between these two cultures. Unfortunately, these differences are often met with misunderstanding rather than curiosity. With Chinese as my mother tongue, deep roots in my cultural heritage, and my experience studying abroad, I believe I am uniquely positioned to help bridge these gaps.
One of my favorite artists, Jacob Collier, is deeply influenced by jazz as well as many other genres. Jazz gives him a versatile compositional approach that allows him to express complex and detailed emotions through his music. However, what truly touches people is not just his musical genius—it is the tenderness, love, and peaceful message within his music. He is a light to me, and I want to be a light to others. I want people to feel joy and love when they listen to my music. I believe the best way to promote something is not by giving lectures, but by helping others fall in love with it—by allowing them to feel joy, love, value, and peace through the experience. I believe this is why the gospel is so powerful: people feel loved, heard, and valued through its message. I want to create music that serves a similar purpose.
Through my music, I want to bring people together. By fusing jazz, classical, and Chinese musical elements, I hope to create works that encourage understanding across cultures and communities. My goal is not only to grow as a composer, but also to use my music to build bridges—between genres, between cultures, and between people. In a world that is becoming more advanced yet sometimes more divided, I believe music can be a source of connection, creativity, and light.
Hello!
I’m excited to be applying for this scholarship. My name is Sarah, and I’m starting a second bachelors in Jazz Studies at the University of Utah this fall. I’m so excited to be going back to school to study music! I grew up playing some classical music, but I never learned theory or Jazz. I loved music but didn’t pursue it because I believed I wasn’t talented enough, and the dream of being a musician became buried under all the stories of my inadequacies until I didn’t even know it was there anymore. I instead took a route my brain deemed more practical. I studied psychology with the intent of becoming a therapist and perhaps getting a job in academia. After many years on that path, with a master’s degree and therapy license in hand, I found myself burnt out with a myriad of mental and physical health issues. Around 6 years ago these issues started to become debilitating and made it difficult to work. I was forced to take a step back and reassess. Somewhere in that process, I felt the call to take piano lessons as an adult. I had always wanted to learn jazz and improvisation, so around a year and a half ago I started taking some lessons from a local.
This is where jazz music took ahold of me and started excavating my dreams, digging through and exposing all the shame and self-criticism that had me trapped. The journey was unnerving and I was shocked to discover how desperately I wanted to play and make music, to be a conduit for the creative energy I could feel swirling around me. I started having dreams where full scores of music would come through me, and they have become progressively more vivid and consistent. I dedicated myself to practicing and learning theory, and started to thirst for more experience and education. Every time I sat down to play I would hear the old criticism and doubt, but with each taste of joy and energy that came from being a part of the music, the stories of inadequacy became less powerful.
My desire for further education led me to audit a combo course at the U this past semester. Miraculously, I found that through my continued study of music, my health problems started to abate. I was feeling more energy than I had in years, and my pain was less intense. The motivation to practice and learn was sprouting from somewhere deep inside, and the hard work was somehow sustainable, even energy-giving. This was evidence for me that I needed to pursue this call more intently and with even more dedication, so I decided to apply for a second bachelors at the U and go back to school. I almost can’t believe that this journey has unfolded the way it has, it feels like the biggest gift of my life and I am determined to show up for it. Jazz has slowly been healing me from the inside out, and I’m in tears as I write this.
I’m still very much a beginner. But I have a natural tenacity that has finally found a sustainable home. I am aching to devote myself to the music and the creative process. I don’t know for sure where the journey leads, but what feels most true to me is that I want to help people through music. There was a reason that psychology called to me in the first place – I wanted to give back, to help lessen suffering and create more ease for my community. That need never had a true home in psychology, I see now it wasn’t aligned with my soul’s desire. I believe music is that path for me now. My biggest dream is to be able to express the energy of life through music, through my body, and for it to move and even heal others. I hope that will look like being a performer, composer, and educator all together. The music is wanting to come through and I’m so excited to see what is to come. I believe I’m finally on my own authentic path, and I believe that from here I can truly be a beneficial force for the other special beings that are in my life and my community.
Thank you for reading this and witnessing my story. I appreciate your consideration of my application!
I originally came from a classical background, and while it was beautiful, sometimes I found the music restricting. As a mega-perfectionist, I found I was often afraid to play for fear of making a tiny mistake in fingering or a trip-up over an arpeggio. After a particularly rough semester involving yellow highlighters, a Rachmaninoff etude and wrist pain, I took a break from the classical world and dove into the magic of jazz.
Jazz is a particularly human experience. While recording technology is incredible, there's nothing quite like seeing a band live. Improvising on the spot, collaborating with band members to know who will solo and who will step back, taking a familiar tune and arranging it as a bossa nova or a waltz—there's electricity in the room that's hard to capture with a microphone. I remember the first time hearing a band jam to "All The Things You Are", how powerful it was to watch musicians play as if discovering music for the first time. From then on, I decided I had to understand how to do that.
It wasn't easy. Though I studied secondary dominants and alternate fifths till my eyes crossed, my first 12-bar blues was rigid and uninspired. I was so worried about playing the right notes that I couldn't find flow. My professor stopped me there. "Instead of worrying about playing the right chord scales," they said, "Just play what feels good to you. Stick with a few notes, and you'll be alright." So I did. I don't know if that performance was technically better, but it came from my heart, and that made all the difference to me.
I knew, of course, that there was only so much I could do in a classroom. I had to show my music to people, no matter how imperfect I thought I was. As I've traveled the world, I've jammed in La Xarranta in Spain; the Gare de Cannes in France; planetariums, opera houses, and jazz clubs, of course! My fingers found their footing, my twelve bar blues melding into bebop, latin and R & B standards. And people clapped and cheered when I finished my solos. But the most touching experiences didn't necessarily happen around the globe or in a fancy venue. They actually happened right in my home town.
The patrons at Alta View Care Center couldn’t remember my name, though I came every week. Some barely remembered their own names. But the minute I played the opening strains of Louis Armstrong or Dean Martin, their faces lit up. One mumbling woman belted every word to “La Vie en Rose” at the top of her lungs. A Carl Fredricksen duplicate requested the Moonlight Sonata each week (my classical background coming back to me), his wary wrinkles transforming into laugh lines as he listened. When I played “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” as an encore, recognition swept across the normally blank face of an elderly gentleman, and he reached for his wife’s hand as alligator tears rolled down her cheeks. I wasn’t just performing, I was carefully curating a playlist to spark memories. For one magical hour, my music released them from their mental cages. They remembered, and their memories gave my music meaning.
That's what jazz is. It's memories, it's magic. And I'm determined to bring it to people around the world; old favorites and new improvisations, heartfelt ballads and wild romps. We live in a world that increasingly pressures us to be perfect, but it's the so-called "imperfections" that make jazz so powerful, because it makes us human. And human connection, it turns out, is all I really needed from my music.
