One of Hana Yamashita's earliest memories is climbing up the family piano to join a visiting pianist at the keyboard. Twenty-four recitals later, she came to Union, where she has thrived as a pianist, flutist, violist, composer, athlete, and actress.
Yamashita, who graduated in June, was attracted to Union by the opportunity to continue all of her interests-not just music. In fact, her adviser, Professor of Performing Arts Hilary Tann, was at first unsure that Yamashita was serious about music because she had so many other interests. Co-founder and president of the women's ice hockey club, Yamashita also has played soccer and tennis, is a member of the choir, and has performed in several theater productions.
Since her first term, though, Yamashita has impressed Tann with her dedication to music. She has continued with her piano lessons and greatly improved upon her technique. “When I came here, I had a lot of musical ability-I could find the music in a piece and pull it off a page and make it sound like music, but my technical ability was beneath my musical ability,” she says. Last fall, she performed a Mozart piano concerto, a dream that had seemed unreachable four years ago.
In addition to her progress as a pianist, she joined the flute choir to keep up her skills and also took up the viola because she wanted to learn a string instrument and face a new challenge.
Her studies and talent culminated in the performance of her senior project, Daybreak, a
full length piece for orchestra that was first performed by the Union Orchestra at the Steinmetz Symposium on May 9.
Daybreak began to come to her last summer while she was visiting her
grandparents in Japan. Sitting in her grandparents' house one evening as the breeze blew through the open windows, Yamashita suddenly began hearing notes in her head. “They were so clear,” she says. “I could visualize exactly what every instrument was doing. Then I realized that this was going to
be the opening of my new piece-my senior project.”
A few months after she had quickly sketched the notes that she heard, Yamashita set to work on the composition, which she revised about
twenty-five times. “When I heard the Union College Orchestra play my piece for the first time, I couldn't believe that it was finally out of my head, into the air and into my ears,” she says. “I had listened to it in my head for so
long just to hear them play the opening was beautiful, but then it got jumbled and I was devastated.”
The orchestra had difficulty with certain sections of the piece, she explains, but
Tann – herself a composer of note reassured her that this was normal. After weeks
of rehearsal, the piece finally came together. “It could never have been as perfect as what I hear in my head, and I knew that already, but to me it just felt perfect,” she says. “Before that point, I felt like I had given my insides to the orchestra and each of them had a little piece of me and it wasn't coming together. Finally, all those pieces came together, and I felt whole again.”
Yamashita says she was “incredibly nervous” about the debut of Daybreak. “It was part of me, and the orchestra was going to perform it for the audience to accept or not accept-to like or to dislike-and I had no control over it. All I could do was sit and wait and listen. When they finished, I was shaking. Professor Tann had me come up on stage to take a bow and I thought I might trip. Then, I turned around and people started standing and their faces were lit up. There was this amazing rush of excitement and energy and relief flooding my body; I was so pleased.”
Twice, Yamashita received the College's Victor Herbert Prize, awarded to the student who shows the most promise of making a contribution to American music. Last winter, she studied abroad in Barbados and taught music theory to middle school students-and loved it. After graduation, she plans to move to Colorado for a year, hoping to teach a few piano lessons and start an a cappella singing
group the first steps in what she hopes will be a career of teaching music and giving piano lessons.