Keene State music student Victoria Young has been awarded the Presser Foundation Undergraduate Scholar Award for 2024-2025.
The award, according to the Presser Foundation’s website, is given to students who have “achieved a high level of musical and academic excellence, demonstrated leadership and service, and contributed to an inclusive community.”
Young, a senior percussion performance major from Vermont, has been involved in many groups and had many roles within the music department in her four years at KSC. Young said she has been a part of the school’s concert band, orchestra, percussion ensemble, concert choir, jazz ensemble, jazz combos and brass ensemble over the years. Young has also been a student conductor for both the concert band and the orchestra.
Young has taken on a leadership role among students in the music department, which she said started in the second semester of her first year at KSC when she became the leader of the percussion section. Young said leadership roles come naturally to her and are something she enjoys taking on.
“I’ve always been a natural-born leader just by nature and I really enjoy organization and planning. Those types of tasks are just things that I genuinely enjoy, so doing them is not a chore for me,” Young said. “It’s been interesting to navigate being a peer but then also being in that leadership [role].”
Young has also had experience working as the primary tutor for music theory students, which she said has been one of her favorite experiences at KSC, as she hopes to one day earn a doctoral degree to be able to teach music theory at a collegiate level.
“Tutoring has been a very fruitful and rewarding process. Finding ways to help individual students that might not be the exact way the teacher teaches it for it to click for them has been really fun,” Young said. “Students have told me that they feel comfortable and they don’t feel pressured, which is exactly what I would want, for them to feel like they have an environment that they can take risks and make mistakes.”
In addition to all of her other achievements, Young has been named the concert band member of the year twice in her time at KSC. Young attributed the hard work that earned her this title to her love for the people that she gets to work with.
“Doing the little extra stuff is really worth it because of the people that are in the ensemble. You put time and care into the people you care about, so it’s been a blessing for the last four years to have that family,” Young said.
When talking about her love for music, Young said she is most passionate about the way that music can make people feel emotions.
“I really enjoy the solo marimba repertoire that I play because it can be so emotional and real,” Young explained. “Very rhythmically driven music is also fun and has its place, but the music that really connects to people is what I enjoy the most.”
Young said her passion for music originated in her childhood, in a household with three musically inclined older sisters.
“From the earliest home videos I’ve seen of myself, I was always singing or making up little songs or wanting to play the piano,” Young said. “It was always a part of the routine in my household, and I don’t remember being like, ‘Oh, I want to do this.’ It was always just what I did.”
Young said her family and childhood have contributed greatly to her motivation in her education and future career as a musician.
“My parents never forced me to do this stuff, but they were always very encouraging and they’re also two very driven people, so it was nice to have that modeled,” Young said. “Part of it is thinking about childhood me and wanting to make that version of myself proud.”
Young said KSC has been the “perfect place” for her as she has transitioned out of the small town she grew up in and looks ahead to the future.
“This school had a lot of unique opportunities because we’re a pretty small school,” Young said. “At a bigger school, I might not necessarily have had all the opportunities that I had here. I’m really thankful for that and I try not to take that for granted because that’s something that’s unique here, that if you want to do something, you can do it, it’s not like there’s barriers there.”
Receiving the Presser Foundation Undergraduate Scholar Award is a “huge honor,” Young said, adding it encourages her that she is on the right track as she looks forward to hopefully attending graduate school post-graduation.
Professor of Music Dr. Heather Gilligan has known and taught Young in all four of her years at KSC, as well as serving as an inspirational mentor for her, according to Young.
Gilligan described Young’s ambition and curiosity as two of her most defining characteristics as a music student.
“She always thinks about her own education, curiosity, interest and takes that as far as she can,” Gilligan said. “She’s not bound by the classroom itself. Her education is always kind of a moving, morphing entity because she is constantly tending to it. She’s constantly furthering her knowledge, even if it’s beyond what the class has covered.”
Additionally, Gilligan described Young as an active department citizen, citing her help in organization and preparation for audition days and moving percussion equipment for concerts as examples of her citizenship.
“She’s just always there. She’s very aware of what needs to be done, where other people need help, and she steps up and does it,” Gilligan said.
Gilligan said Young earned this award by being a standout student in every way.
“It’s a combination of ability, work ethic, ambition, enthusiasm, all these things that combine to make her into someone who’s really deserving of an award like this. This award is prestigious and it also comes with funding, and I think the faculty felt that she deserves both,” Gilligan said.
Associate Professor of Music Dr. John Hart, who has also known Young for the past four years as her professor and academic advisor, described Young as “incandescent” and a great representative for the music department.
“[Young] is the full package because not only does she have talent, but she is constantly working to improve herself. She has a bright attitude and she shares that freely with all of her peers and her professors,” Hart said.
“She has been a wonderful ambassador for the music program as a whole,” Hart continued. “She volunteers to meet prospective students. She volunteers and works audition days. So having [Young] as the outward face of the department has really been wonderful.”
Hart also spoke about Young earning the Concert Band Member of the Year award twice, which was only the second time in the band’s history that someone has won it twice, according to Hart. He attributed this feat to the strong connections Young has built with the band members.
“She assumes the best in everyone and she sees the best in everyone. She has a unique talent for seeing the best in other people, especially when they don’t see it in themselves,” Hart said. “She just has a free, easy way about her in connecting to people. She builds rapport very well.”
Hart said Young is deserving of the Presser Foundation award because she embodies what it means to be a scholar.
“Scholarship is to live a life of constant inquiry and always being curious, not seeking a definitive answer, but seeking for the sake of seeking, and this is what [Young] does exceptionally well,” Hart said. “For her to be named a Presser Scholar, that’s not an end. That’s a continuation. That’s an acknowledgment of a long and wonderful trajectory that she’s on of academic and musical excellence.”
Justin Dearborn can be reached at
jdearborn@kscequinox.com
