Blair Student Stories

WATCH: Learn how Blair composition student Tatum Earp was inspired by her late father's senior photography project to create a unique and inspiring Immersion Vanderbilt project. Read More

Class of 2023: Kingston Ho doesn’t just play beautiful music—he’s studying how his brain and body make those melodies happen. Read why the award-winning violinist with multiple prestigious international competitions under his belt chose to double major in violin performance at the Blair School of Music and in medicine, health and society in the College of Arts and Science. Read More

Meet some members of the Class of 2023 who are cultivating belonging to strengthen, support and enrich the community at Vanderbilt and beyond.  Read More

Class of 2023: For some, a piano is just an instrument. For Jack Allen, a piano performance major at the Vanderbilt Blair School of Music, it is a vehicle for compassion, inspiration, teaching and community. Read More

When Syrian native Musbah Shaheen, BA’17, traveled to the U.S. for the first time to attend Vanderbilt, he had no idea how the university’s cornerstone philosophies of equity, diversity and belonging would stretch him personally or shape his professional future and Ph.D. research. Read More

Anighya Crocker, BMus’21, came to Vanderbilt as a multiracial, first-generation college student with big dreams to serve the community through public office and music. His Vanderbilt experience as a double major in Law, History and Society and music performance has helped him to hone both of those dreams. Read More

It’s not unusual to see Hao Zhen literally bouncing with enthusiasm into the classrooms and rehearsal halls at Vanderbilt Blair School of Music. Her excitement about making music can be traced to a pivotal moment in her childhood. Read More

Any Nashville songwriter will tell you that some of the most meaningful collaborations come during crisis. Vanderbilt undergraduates in a songwriting class at the Blair School of Music got a taste of this when they partnered with peers on the other side of the globe, who also were dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, to co-create original songs. Read More

Some students participating in a Blair School of Music songwriting seminar planned on penning songs about graduating from college. Then the novel coronavirus pandemic hit. The students left campus, and the desire to process their emotions through song increased exponentially. Read More

Rama Kumaran initially intended to study both science and flute when he came to Vanderbilt. He says he didn’t come expecting to know everything. “But I expected to do everything," he says. Read More

Vanderbilt sophomore Jacob Beranek loves music and his Czech heritage. These passions recently converged in an incredible opportunity for the talented music composition major. Read More

“Adventurous” is the word that best describes Sarah Robinson. The Blair School of Music student is unafraid of doing things she has never tried before and open to new cultural experiences. Read More

Recently, Berger graduated from Massachusetts-based Hebrew College, where she was ordained a rabbi–cantor—the school’s first, and one of only a handful in the country. Read More

Blair School of Music senior David Rodgers is graduating with a newly released album of jazz originals he composed, arranged and performed, as well as a spot in the touring band of Grammy Award-winning blues musicians Keb’ Mo’ and Taj Mahal. Read More

Michaela Novakovic’s majors take her from the grand to the microscopic on a daily basis. The Sorrento, Florida, native and Blair School of Music senior is a double major in harp and molecular and cellular biology. Read More

On Leap Day—Feb. 29—Blair School of Music senior Jack Coen took a leap of faith. That night Coen, a composition and theory major, premiered his capstone project "Folk and Flora"—a song cycle based on flowers and how people relate to them—in Sarratt Cinema to a full house. Read More

At 14, Nora Pertz began pestering her mother to let her study abroad. And ever since her high school piano teacher found the program in Vienna, Austria, in which Pertz studied piano the summer before starting Vanderbilt, she has never looked back. Read More