The Mainsheet

by PARKER ALBARIAN

Chadwick senior Victoria Lowe has been gracing the world with her voice since, well, the moment she could talk.

“I would sing all the time around in the classroom, and my friends were like, ‘Shut up.’ My little heart would break,” Lowe says.

Hoping to find a place where their daughter could share her vocal gift, Lowe’s parents started her in a classical choir when she was 6 years old. Lowe sang with the Colburn School of Music in Los Angeles and other art academies, but it wasn’t until later that she would see a show that would change the trajectory of her adolescent music career.

When Lowe was 12, her mother, Nicholle, took her to see the Loyola Marymount University Concert Choir. “I was like, ‘Mom, I have to be in this group.’ I don’t know what I was thinking––they’re full-grown adults. I went on the website, and I was like, ‘There’s no age … I could technically audition for this ensemble.’

“So I emailed the director, Dr. Mary Breden, and I had an audition,” Lowe recalled. Breden was dazzled, and offered Lowe a position in the choir for the following year. She would become a 13-year-old singing in a professional university choir with vocally trained adults.

The LMU Convert Choir has provided Lowe with mentorship from both the university instructors and her colleagues, many of whom were studying music at LMU or were alumni with music degrees.

“It was fun because I was the little child of the choir. They didn’t treat me any differently skill-wise, but they protected me in a sense. I’ve gotten to connect with a lot of them,” Lowe said.

Last summer, the LMU Concert Choir was one of three groupsinvited to Carnegie Hall in New York City to perform with the New England Symphonic Ensemble, celebrating MidAmerica Productions’ 39th anniversary.

Lowe started writing music as a sophomore at Chadwick. She elected to take AP Music Theory as an independent study during her junior year, advised by Richard Babcock, the Director of Orchestras.

“It was just me and him in a classroom, so he was able to really focus on me. I ended up loving music theory,” she says.

This year, Lowe is doing an independent composition study alongside Kevin Babuder, Chadwick’s Department Chair of the Performing Arts and Director of
Choral Music.

“He helped me a lot with prepping for college applications, so everything looks neat and complete and my scores look legible to people,” she said.

“Mr. Babuder and Mr. Babcock are the teachers at Chadwick who I’ve connected with, and who have prepared me very well for a future music career.”

The college majors that Lowe has applied for vary between schools, but her main discipline will be composition. “I want to ultimately score films as a film composer,” she said.

Lowe is currently in a fellowship program with Brightwork newmusic in Los Angeles. She and six other high school students were chosen to be in one of the corporation’s chamber ensembles. Lowe is working with their resident composer to write a piece for a performance in June.

Working with Brightwork marks the first time that Lowe has collaborated with others in composition. In the ensemble, she focuses more on voice and piano, but composes full orchestral pieces on her own––brass, strings and wood-
winds galore.

“I can play the drums, but I’m so mediocre. Give me a Katy Perry song and I can figure it out,” she said.

It’s hard to believe that Lowe could be mediocre at playing any instrument. “The one thing when writing music is that you have to study how to write for instruments that you might not play.”

Lowe references her library of orchestration books often. “They basically guideline what it means to properly notate a score of music,” she says. Lowe also utilizes her human composition encyclopedia, Babuder, for advice when things get difficult.

“It’s challenging writing something when you have no idea how it will come across to the other instruments in real life. “It’s a lot of learning and a lot of reading, but it’s cool. It’s like a puzzle,” she said.

Lowe strengthened her puzzle-solving skills at a three-month program at the Juilliard School in New York last summer. The program focused on music theory and aural skills.

While Lowe’s vocal and instrumental talents encourage her passions embracing music, her interests do not stop with the arts.

“I may minor in vocal studies, but I also really love political science–maybe economics or African American Studies. So whether that’s double-majoring in music and an outside field, I really want to combine those two in college,” Lowe said.

The experiences Lowe has had this early in her life have trumped the resumes of many university-educated musicians and composers.

“I didn’t think I’d be able to say that I performed at Carnegie Hall when I was 16. It was always a dream to do it at some point in my life, I just didn’t know I’d be able to do it so soon.”

Lowe looks back on all the friends that music and the arts have brought to her. Again, she sells herself short on the impact she has had on others. Lowe grants
herself only a small fraction of the credit she deserves.

The Chadwick community is blessed to have had the chance to watch such a kind-hearted person blossom into such an honest and talented artist.

Said Lowe: “It’s weird because I don’t know who I would be without music in my life. It is just something I have always done.”