Throughout my life, my experiences with the ups and downs of my own mental health have resulted in the course and quality of my life being drastically changed. At the start of my high school career, I had this misguided belief that my life would just always turn out fine if I just trusted the world to prevent me from encountering harm; however, this lackadaisical attitude led me very far from my goals and further worsened my mental health due to my own naivety. This did not make me necessarily cynical but I most definitely let go of a belief of the world to do good by me and instead focused my energy on making the world good for me through my own actions and plans. This belief in advocating for myself did not immediately affect all aspects of my life and this change finally reached my relationships after I realized I was entangled with a narcissistic and toxic individual who would utilize me for my skills and bribe me to do so before mistreating me. Once again, my naivety taught me a lesson in trusting in my own wants and needs first before being able to give others what they need. In my career, my past two lessons had primed me to understand how important prioritizing my own needs would be in my success; however, the reality of my career goals and the methods I would need to accomplish came crashing down as I put my career in front of my physical and mental health. In my first year of college, I would put my practice and composition before my own needs such as eating, sleeping, and socializing and as anyone can clearly see, that is not sustainable. I quickly found the secret to my success was actually investing in my health first so that the work that I put into my career has the highest return on my investment possible. For example, rather than practicing very late and waking up early, I found better and faster results from sleeping more and waking up early to practice with more sleep beforehand. Throughout this entire process, I was confronted by the reality of the mental health industry's issues and the progress that has been made. In my own search for the help I needed to succeed, I saw that the stigma regarding mental health has slightly dissipated; however modern life, especially as a full-time student, is not very lenient with the mental health needs of the high-stress society that we reside in. My life experiences have taught me that my first priority is my physical and mental needs before my career and happiness and that all needs to come before the needs of others that I love and care about because I need to be internally safe and happy before extending my help to others.

Generation wealth is a resource your descendants will carry with them to make their lives easier in the future, whether it be monetary, physical, or even a moral resource. For me, the wealthiest people are the happiest people that I know because money can alleviate some worries and issues that arise; however, to achieve true happiness, the individual must find their calling in life. The happiest people I know have found what they feel is never work and every day, they wake up to the gift of a higher calling. My father worked so many hours every night and I very often would go multiple days without seeing him; however, in every tired moment, he would say to me "Find a job that you love so you never work a day in your life." These words of wisdom were distilled from his life experience and was a gift to me. This is the generational wealth I value the most because no amount of money can distill a life's worth of experience into advice; however, this advice can ease money troubles by guiding individuals' choices. My life has been guided by my father's advice so much so that despite the perhaps dubious promise of a music degree giving me a stable living wage, I choose the career path that ensured I would wake every day, grateful for the life and opportunities I have been given and worked for. I have followed my father's idea to the point where I am ecstatic to wake up every day because I have never worked a day like my father wanted me to do. This is the best example of the generational wealth that I have been given in my childhood and I rely on it every day to improve my life. These guiding principles, given to me by the various figures in my life that I look up to, have led me to live a happier and happier life and those people I look up to are very proud of me for finding this happiness! To achieve greater generational wealth in the future, I must, unfortunately, speak on my monetary plans; however, I want to emphasize the importance of the advice I have been given and how it will impact my future plans. All these small nuggets of advice will be passed on to my children and their children to increase their happiness. Hopefully, within my lifetime and their lifetimes, we will learn even more to pass on once again in addition to perhaps more monetary support. In regard to monetary inheritance, my parents have also passed along wisdom that I use to this day and hopefully throughout my career, I can take that wisdom to accumulate wealth to pass along in addition to the wisdom I have accumulated.

In 5 years, I want to be in Royce Hall at UCLA or Newman Hall at USC premiering my Concerto for Trumpet, a full expression of the talents I am actively cultivating every day. Now this may seem to be a lofty goal; however, my talents in trumpet and flugelhorn performance as well as composition make me hopeful that this dream is very likely. Since I began playing trumpet in 6th grade, I've shown an aptitude for the instrument, picking up techniques and leading my peers in their own development as well. This talent has allowed me to continue to advance my own development in other areas such as in composing and arranging music and flugelhorn. In order of development, composition arose due to my need to create a community within my band program, and ever since that moment, my compositions have been inextricably linked to my own voice and the need to bring together people to create beauty in our world. My compositions served as a glue to hold together the various cliques within our band program and propel us further as a whole due to this sense of community. Later, I began developing a love for the flugelhorn, partially aided by my compositional explorations into new sounds, and this began as simply improvising with this new timbre I had available to me; however, it soon blossomed into a new language of extended techniques and harmonic language that I still explore to this day. The tone and flexibility of the flugelhorn combined with my own compositional talent lead me to discover new tools to tell my own story and bring together people ever closer and create a tightly-knit community to support and love one another. Finally, this lofty dream of my own Trumpet Concerto being premiered at UCLA or USC stems from my desire to pursue music far beyond just my undergraduate degree and instead look forward to my Doctorate in Music Composition after my Master's in Trumpet Performance. I fully intend on further honing my performance and composition skills to better express myself to a point where music is a language I am just as fluent in as I am fluent in English. To be able to freely express myself at all points, compositionally and on my instrument is a dream of mine that will take many years beyond the near future; however, I am confident that I will be able to reach the stars and a little bit beyond to grab ahold of my dreams.

Learning a new language is such a daunting task but my journey into the arts has been so much more work and filled with unimaginable joy than learning any spoken language. My journey began in 6th grade, learning trumpet in my middle school band, and looking back on it, I really had no clue what I was getting into but at the moment it all felt like fun and games that made me feel like I had a community that I belonged to. After making it through middle school, I looked to high school and saw no other path forward besides joining the band again, partially for the community but also partly for the satisfaction of my Physical Education credits. Once I reached high school, I met people who were so very passionate about music as an expression of themselves to the greater world. I got swept up immediately and wanted to be like them and I wanted to be a vessel for music and to be able to fluently express myself. After a year or two, all of them had graduated and gone on to do bigger and better things and I felt alone, without my community. This loneliness left me with two choices, either give up on my music and find another community or I could find a new way for myself to contribute to the greater musical narrative which I chose for myself. In the end, the only logical choice was to become the people I looked up to and for me, that meant becoming a composer and arranger for my high school band. I began arranging and writing in every moment I had because it was a natural extension of my jazz improvisation background. Rather than spontaneous composition contained within another person's composition, I could create an entire experience and mood to take my audience on a journey. I struggled to reconcile my own turmoil with this freedom and often the two would clash; however, the moments of clarity where the two met, the most moving piece I've written have been produced and my fate was sealed with their creation. I immediately understood that my world was one of creation and storytelling because I felt as though I could create community and create a place for people like my younger self to feel loved, safe, seen, and understood. Seeing as this was my path forward and with college on the horizon, the only sensible path was to study composition despite the possibility of failure. I saw my purpose in art and I had only one opportunity in front of me to move forward. So I took my opportunity and moved so far away from home to make a new home where I could create a new community of musicians, filled with love and respect. Now, halfway through my Bachelor's in Music Composition, I feel as though the community I have been searching for has finally been made and I am looking forward to working with my incredible colleagues to record my own music and create new music to create more beauty in this world. This journey has shown me so many emotions I never knew were possible and has brought me to my highest and lowest points; however, I am eternally grateful that every day I get to wake up and make music and use my voice to carefully and consciously make art to make this world more and more beautiful every day. I hope to wake up every next day I have and make this world a better place for my younger self.

The most inspiring book I have ever read is Animal Farm by George Orwell. At 7:00 A.M. every morning, I would walk into my AP English Language class, tired but excited to learn more and more every day. Unlike most assigned readings, I had heard about Animal Farm from my sibling and was excited to read it. The parallels with the rise of the Soviet Union weaving a tale with farm animals on how you take power. You remove the educated individuals, create a scapegoat to push all issues onto, and you give the rest of the populace a story to believe in. This formula taught me a great deal about how to take power from institutions already put in place; however, my main concern with and fascination with this novel center around how to recognize these events happening in the world. This inspired me to become more concerned with political issues happening in the world around me, but also to become more active in politics.

This is a photo of my dog, Apollo, and at 10 years old, we got him a new harness to start going on daily walks during the pandemic. This photo has always held a special place in my heart because this harness and small smile in his eyes made him look like a small child ready to go off to school for the first time. This reminded me that I once had been perceived in this way as well, a young child ready to go off and enter the world.

Before we talk about me, let us talk about what makes me: Art and Music. Art and Music are essential parts of the human experience. Music affects us on a biological and psychological level and the earliest forms of art are about 40,000 years old. Art and music have been such an integral part of society for so long, helping us come to terms with the life experiences words fail to communicate, affect others, and affect ourselves. The words ecstasy, sorrow, and anguish mean nothing without context and/or definitions; however art and music exist within and beyond what words can do. Steve Vai's electrifying solos can give a feeling to the word ecstasy. Mozart's requiems can create a soundscape that conveys the true meaning of sorrow. Grieg's Funeral March, with its massive brass swells and dissonant chords, portray the anguish associated with loss. All of these examples give meaning to a word without using a single word. Mark Rothko's simplistic and dark art conveys a dark and brooding feeling you can struggle to describe with mere words. Picasso's cubism and Dali's surrealism present the world in a view that is difficult to comprehend and places the audience in a state where they are unsure of what they are seeing without using a single word. The effect of art and music on the human experience is undeniably massive throughout every civilization. Whether lifted up like in the Roman and Greek societies, heavily regulated and given a narrative to follow like in Soviet Russia, or anywhere in between, humanity has used art and music to influence others. In Soviet Russia, they controlled all forms of artistic and musical creativity because they understood that by controlling such an integral part of the human experience, you can control the humans. They declared Soviet Realism to be the de facto style of art that must be created and people immediately understood what this meant for their freedom. Shostakovich, a composer in the Soviet Union fought against this through his music through clever double meaning and manipulation of themes throughout his career. In his ballet, Golden Age, he tells the story of a Russian sports team coming to America. The official program notes try to paint a story of rustic and traditional dances being the focus of the superior Russian dancing while calling the American dancing filled with "...depraved eroticism..."; however, this is clearly a cover-up for the truth as the plot conflicts with this story and Shostakovich gives the best developing and most interesting music to the Americans. As well as using music and art to affect others, it is often used to help the individual voice and/or come to terms with their own struggles. Once more, if we examine Shostakovich's work, specifically his later string quartets, we hear his fear and anxiety regarding his own mortality. Painfully orchestrated harmony and excruciating dynamic extremes spread out over a large temporal canvas voice his fear of his certain death. We create to understand what we experience, whether that be positive or negative. We create to celebrate and we create to remember. Finally, I can introduce myself, my name is Hector Torres, the son of two immigrants who left their country because of a civil war that limited artistic and musical freedom to prevent revolt against the crimes against humanity being committed. I am a musician and composer who creates my voice everyday to help the world, myself included, understand what I go through and how we will make it through to our tomorrows.

My vision for this piece, Three Fours, was to take the pitch material I randomly generated for the melody of the first section and divide it up into three movements that each evoked different moods. I let this very broad vision guide me by allowing my mind to run wild with various compositional techniques I have learned throughout my studies. The two major experiences that have molded my vision for this piece are Danny Elfman's soundtrack to Sam Rami's "Spiderman" and NERO's "Fugue State". Starting with my earliest influence for Three Fours, Sam Rami's adaptation of Spiderman and its soundtrack by Danny Elfman came out in 2002, a year before I was born; however, I remember in my childhood, I was entranced by the beautiful harmony and hair-raising dissonances telling a nuanced story of love, loss, and hope for the future. Next, NERO, the British electronic trio released their song "Fugue State" on their album Welcome to Reality in 2011 and when I heard the brassy and rhythmic introduction, I immediately wanted to imitate that, whether that be rhythmically or just in the emotion it evokes. My artistic dreams for my future in particular are to have more freedom of expression in my composition because right now, I am still in the process of developing my own voice. The style and form of this piece mirror that of other composers. Furthermore, this piece is for a chamber ensemble, a distinctly classical group. Despite my background in Jazz, Classical, and Latin music, I am not fully fluent in writing in all these styles and my goals lie in that shortcoming. I will be able to freely express myself through many genres of music.

To me, actively listening means listening to another person's thoughts, emotions, and viewpoints without passing judgement or mentally making remarks. When I actively listen to those around me by placing myself in their position to understand what they are feeling. Listening to a person means understanding where a person is coming from and what they are feeling. We all have very different life experiences and different ways we process emotions; however, we cannot expect others to understand what we are feeling or thinking without communicating with them. After listening to what they are communicating and doing your best to internalize what they are saying and understand where they are coming from, you can try to offer them advice, comfort, or perhaps just a person to have near them depending on what they require. The person communicating how they feel may require different things and you have to be sensitive to what they might need.

My love for music grew out of my need to belong to a group of people and has evolved from there. I joined my middle school band when I was in the 6th grade because my oldest sibling was in the marching band at their high school and when I went to go watch their showcase, I was stunned. People can move around a field, creating shapes and visual effects while creating music? I was in awe and then I saw the respect for their peers and pride for their craft they carried as they mingled with each other, not just as friends, but as a found family. I wanted friends I was so close to that I could trust them like family and that was what initially brought me into music; however, once I got to high school, my reason to love music shifted. When I joined the jazz band at the high school, I started learning how to improvise and I fell in love with the act of creation. I could, in realtime, create a melody that conveys the idea I have in my head to the real world. I fell in love with the freedom of expressiong and I started searching for how to express the ideas in my head more and more. I found composition and realized I could create no only the melody, but the harmonic framework, the soundscape, and the very sounds people will hear. I found full freedom in my self-expression and I was immediately enamored. I can never let go of my life in composition and especially in music because my self-expression happens through my music.

More recently, I have formalized my goals, academic, career, and personal, and written them down to plan for how I will achieve these goals. In my academic life, I will finish my B.M. in Music Composition at San Jose State University and apply to USC and SJSU to pursue a Graduate Degree. At this point, I am still unsure about what exactly my graduate degree will be in; however, I am leaning towards Composition or Conducting. In my professional life, I will be a gigging musician, composer, arranger, and copyist in either L.A or the Bay Area. I want to continue performing as a trumpet player because I truly do love playing the trumpet; however, composing music is what I would love to do most often. With composition, rehearsing and conducting my own pieces would be a necessity and I will relish being able to do so. Lastly, in my personal life, I will have 1 album produced and published with another album in the works because I made myself a promise that at the end of every degree I pursue, I will create an album encapsulating the musical journey I have been on. In my personal life, I do not have many goals because I have always believed that as long as I pursue what makes me happiest while causing the least harm to others, I will be content with my life.

Waking up to the sunrise as I start my day is one of the smallest things in my life that prepare me for my day. I live on the ninth floor of my dorm and every morning at 7 a.m., I see the sunrise over downtown San Jose and I feel so grateful for being given another day to live my life how I want to. I get ready with the image of the sunrise in my mind and rejoicing that today I get to create music and interact with artists like myself. As I leave my dorm to start my morning bike ride, I see the sunrise again and I once again feel joy wash over me because I know this bike ride I'm going on is the start of my warm-up to start making music today. Lastly, as I finish my bike ride and get to the music building, the sunrise watches over me as I retrieve my instrument and music stand. The sunrise has been a very simple pleasure in my morning routine this past year and it serves as the best reminder that I am grateful for the life I have been given and the life I am pursuing.

Giving is so important to me because when I give, whoever receives feels better and I feel better. A simple act by one person from one person leaves two or more people feeling better. Whether it is a gift, material or monetary, helping someone with a difficult task, or even just spending time with that person is giving and they will appreciate it. When I was younger, I would do large-scale service projects that would last sometimes 4 days of working outside doing landscaping, and regardless of how the job went, someone would be smiling because of the work we did. Now, I more often give in smaller moments like just giving food to my friends or giving time to my friends and I still, without fail see a smile or at the very least, see their spirits lift after giving. The act of giving does not only help those who receive because, after every time I gave, I would have a slow and creeping sensation of joy that would make my entire day better. Now that I have less time to spend doing larger acts of giving, I enjoy giving in smaller acts more often. I often find myself giving small moments of time to my friends and they always smile and talk with me, making my days better. Additionally, I find myself sharing food or even cooking for my friends to warm my heart as well as theirs.

My happiest memory was crying in a high school indoor basketball court. Our marching band would celebrate our graduating class by performing our field show them; however, this season was especially difficult because I was the Assistant Drum Major while marching sousaphone for the first time, and one of my closet friends had been expelled leaving me to lead the Low Brass section. I had this overwhelming sense of arrival because I had realized that these people are my family, I helped create this community of people that I got to see grow and mature as people people and musicians.

Being listened to and having someone to help you make it through the day has always been what I need when I am not whole, spiritually, physically, or emotionally and personally, that is my favorite way to help others. I find that many of my closest friends want to feel heard and understood before being offered solutions; however, as individuals, we have very different views on life and how we react to our own personal issues. This makes communication and comprehension essential to helping someone. After listening and understanding what they are going thorough, they might have found their own solution or feel more at ease because they have vocalized what had been on their mind. If they are still troubled, offering solutions or even just trying to refer them to some that might have better solutions for their issues shows that you have out genuine thought into their life and are trying to help them. Beyond listening, helping them make it through the day, whether that be doing activities in their place, finishing chores they had, or other actions, this always seems to lift a weight of their shoulders as they feel cared for and they know there is someone in their life willing to go out of their way to help them continue though life to eventually be content.

The same sound has woken me upper for the past 8 years, my alarm clock going off as if to say, “Get up and go out to change something for the better because you can!” My motivation to get out of bed and do what I do everyday is simply that: I get to wake up everyday and do what I love to do. How many people in the world get to wake up every morning in a beautiful city to do what they love to do each and everyday? Furthermore, I get to create music, one of the most important parts of the human experience and I get to experience it everyday! I am overjoyed everyday to sit down and create music with others; however, I am also a composer so everyday, I can literally create new music that expresses how I feel or express what I would like to tell the world. Music extends beyond what language could ever hope or dream of communicating and I am able to create music that communicates more than any story or visual art could tell. Paintings can be complex or even inaccessible, stories can be in other languages, but music is universal! A massive choir and orchestra belting out their hearts will always be a powerful and moving sound in every culture and everyday, I get craft my own voice to communicate to the world through music.

Everyday, I wake up at 7 a.m., grab my bicycle and start my day with breathing and affirmations before starting my practice routine to develop my best skill, my trumpet playing. I have been playing the trumpet for close to 7 years and everyday I work to hone my skills on trumpet to be able to clearly express the ideas I have in my mind. Everyday I wake up and set myself up for success before even beginning to work. After stretching and doing breathing exercises while speaking affirmations about the practice session to manifest the goals I set. I also set goals before even entering the practice room in my practice journal. After these steps, I can warm up for a successful practice session; however, I do this multiple times a day and repeat these steps before every session, totaling about 4 hours of practice time or 6 hours in total of my day. These steps all rely on a good nights sleep for success because while we sleep this practice and all these muscle and mental work becomes ingrain through myelinating the pathways between brain cells. I devote 6 hours everyday to developing my best skill, my trumpet playing, because I could not be happier doing anything else.

The moment I felt the physical impact of sound while sitting in the Rose Bowl stadium changed my life. It was the summer of 2018 and I was a sophomore in high school at the Rose Bowl to see the World Class Drum Corps compete. I had been chosen to be our Brass Captain for this season of Marching Band at my high school and we went to the Rose Bowl to see now the best groups in the marching arts perform. I sat down to watch the Santa Clara Vanguard perform their 2018 show: Babylon. After hearing the stark contrast between the soft opening and the jarring horn stabs, the middle ballad movement swelled to a massive company front where the sound of the contrabasses impacted our bodies aurally and physically. This experience combined with my memories of the community of musicians that helped me succeed in school made me realize that I have been blessed with the opportunity to create a community of individuals around me that can affect the space around us with our music before we even consider how the actual subject matter of the music affects the people around us. This moment of realization bolstered my drive to become a musician to make change in this world while bringing humans together to celebrate what we have.