Brooks Lin, a junior at Silver Creek

Brooks has been playing the flute for about 5 years and is now learning how to play the saxophone for having similar properties to the flute. He initially wasn’t interested in music at all until he decided to join band, following along with his sister. He chose to play the flute because it was the lightest instrument out of many others, such as the clarinet or trumpet. 

“My favorite thing about music is probably practicing my instruments. Fixing the mistakes I make while playing a piece and learning to master it is just very satisfying to me. Practicing may be frustrating sometimes since most of the time I don’t see immediate improvement, but I tell myself as long as I keep practicing, I am bound to improve,” he said. 

Something that inspires Brooks to keep on practicing would be his violin-prodigy friends in college who have spent their entire lives playing the violin. He listened to them play and was instantly in awe, telling himself that if he could just put his mind to it, he can hopefully one day reach their level of playing. 

Besides balancing schoolwork and practice, he also has a hobby for playing video games. He has recently started playing a new game called “Genshin Impact”. Not only does he enjoy the gameplay, he has a real passion for the soundtrack of the game. A lot of the songs are original orchestral pieces and popular classics.

He’s got serious dedication for playing music, he enjoys playing music but doesn’t see it as a viable career path. As of right now, he’s considering majoring in biotechnology or mathematics. He’s thinking about applying to colleges such as UC Berkeley or UC Irvine.

For his junior year, he’s taking the classes AP Biology, AP Calc BC, and AP Lang. Calculus is the class that takes up a majority of his time because there is a huge workload. He finds it hard to balance his classes and passion for music, but manages to find time to do both. Although, he sacrifices a lot of sleep and his social life to manage this.

His proudest musical accomplishment would be getting a Unanimous Superior score in 8th grade band, and his favorite piece to play is “Danzon no. 2.”