Emma Breen is finishing her grasp’s in trumpet efficiency and getting ready to proceed her research at UCLA this fall as a doctoral scholar. She has additionally staked out terrain on the earth of science, a ardour she holds equally with music and plans to proceed.
2023 Graduate Pupil Graduation Speaker Emma Breen
“It’s important to be versatile,” stated Breen, reflecting on her choices to pursue a number of paths. “And UCLA is a good place to arrange for a profession within the twenty-first century.”
The 2023 Graduate Pupil Graduation Speaker got here to UCLA very consciously. She selected UCLA over the Royal Academy of Music, each as a result of she wished to work with trumpet professor Jens Lindemann, and since UCLA supplied a special sort of schooling.
“The Royal Academy is far more conventional of their method,” stated Breen. “I felt like UCLA would give me alternatives to do different attention-grabbing issues, and that was nice. I used to be additionally lucky to obtain a Mimi Alpert Basis Scholarship, which actually made it potential to come back to LA.”
Breen has amassed fairly the document whereas doing her graduate work at UCLA. She was chosen to play with the Disney All-American School Band. She received the principal trumpet place within the American Youth Symphony. She is an energetic session recorder and has carried out throughout the USA.
“There are lots of alternatives for musicians in Los Angeles,” stated Breen. “It’s important to hold your eyes open and be energetic. It may be an ideal place to work.”
Prepping for a gig this Might at The Catalina Jazz Membership
Breen has jumped with each ft into the lifetime of an expert musician. Along with recitals and performances with ensembles at UCLA, her most up-to-date session work consists of recording for Unicorn, a forthcoming animated collection on HBO by the director of The PowerPuff Ladies. That in flip led to an invite to play at Comedian-Con in San Diego this summer time. And all of this got here on prime of being able of management with American Youth Symphony (AYS).
“It’s a lot work,” stated Breen. “I bought the latest music for AYS when the trumpet studio was in Boulder, Colorado for the nationwide trumpet competitors. And I sat within the resort room, wanting on the materials, I assumed to myself, ‘That is an excessive amount of. I’m going to should stop trumpet.’”
However then Breen set to work, discovering that she was able to studying the music and sustaining her demanding schedule. She credit the welcoming tradition of the AYS.
“Many of the different musicians are slightly older than I’m, and so they have extra expertise,” stated Breen. “However they welcomed me proper in and so they’ve been so supportive. It’s actually made all of the distinction.”
Then there’s Breen’s scientific work. Breen doesn’t have an undergraduate background in science, however she has labored in a lab ever since highschool. As an undergraduate at Northwestern College, she was a part of the college’s famed Pinkett Lab in addition to the SONIC/ATLAS lab, collaborating with NASA’s long-range house missions by conducting cognitive analysis in each Russian and English.
Straight from the Laboratory
How Breen ended up with 4 years of lab expertise—with out a single undergraduate science class—is a narrative we’ve coated earlier than, and value studying. But it surely was not simply an undergraduate job. Breen presently conducts stem-cell analysis on the Zamudio Lab inside UCLA’s Division of Molecular Cell Developmental Biology.
“Science is vital to me,” stated Breen. “It feeds part of me that music doesn’t. And I don’t see a necessity to choose between the 2. I do know that typically folks suppose should you aren’t laser-focused on one factor you’ll be able to’t do it nicely. However I disagree.”