'Tuning In' Human Interest Article

Article Title: Tuning in: young musician gives insight on how classical music can change lives

“Music is the physical vibration of energy, and it’s beautiful because things like pop music, they have lyrics, they tell you how you’re supposed to feel. But whereas in classical music, it is so subjective and intricate and complex, and it fits humans because of that.” With five piercings on her ears, D.I.Y. bangs, and often mismatched socks, Isabel Lago is not the poster girl for classical music, but her fourteen years of experience playing the violin says another story. At seventeen years-old, the abundant exposure she has to the classical music genre is unlike any typical teenager of this day and age, and with her unique perspective on the reception of the genre in society, Lago suggests that those who are closed-off to classical music are at a loss.

“I think there’s a lot of stereotypes, like preconceived notions that are false, and a lot of ignorance surrounding [classical music],” Lago suggested. “[Many imagine] people who drink tea and listen to chamber music, and they’re all snobby and have British accents, and they’re so uptight and they don’t laugh. I think that’s a huge misconception about classical music: how it’s not fun, and that it’s very serious.”

Like any teenager, she listens to the usual “radio music”, letting loose and jamming to loud, heavily instrumented pop and rock songs, and singing along to rap songs and ballads alike. However, the conventional tunes have its limitations. “Words aren’t fully able to capture and encapsulate so many emotions that one person can feel. We can describe things, like write poetry about love and sing it with a couple chords, but that’s only so much,” Lago explained, touching on the idea of “showing” instead of telling with lyrics, by letting the listener experience the emotions on their own. “It’s so subjective that each person who listens to it will feel differently, because again it reflects on humans and how we’re all so different.

Barber Adagio for Strings is a dark and heart-wrenching quartet piece. Lago illustrated her experiences with this piece when she performed it in 2015 with the Vancouver Youth Symphony Orchestra.

“I remember we dedicated this to the people who recently lost their lives in the Paris attacks, the terrorism in Paris. I remember when we were playing this, our conductor, he made an announcement in the beginning [saying this dedication], and he said a quote by Leonard Bernstein, a fairly legendary in music history. He said, ‘This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.’ And I think that this type of music heals people. It’s a way to heal the broken, and I think nothing besides classical music can really touch that.”

Personally, Lago has her own experience of healing with the aid of classical music a few years ago when she was struggling with mental health issues. “When I was going to lots of stuff, the only thing that would make my life worth living was to make music, and I would only get up for that one reason, which is to practice.”

In the case of mental health, the importance of letting out emotions is always emphasized, and it is the reason for councillors and therapists, but Lago found classical music as her means of release. “It made me express my feelings when words couldn’t. Before, I didn’t really talk about it, but playing the violin and making music allowed me to express it without saying much, without saying anything. I was still able to put forth all the pain, all the hurt, all the loneliness in music and put it out there. It was a way of directing inner feelings and putting it out there.”

Classical music doesn’t only cater to melancholy emotions. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Bacewicz String Quartet for Four Violins creates a playful and lively mood. “It’s very modern,” Lago described, “like the composer Bacewicz, I think he [created music] around the 1900’s, so [there’s] a lot of unconventional ideas, techniques, sounds, harmonies, and layers and layers of things are going on between the four violins. It’s very textured, and it all creates this very happy vibe. And because it’s modern, you don’t really expect a lot of the things that happens. It’s very unpredictable.” It’s hard to deny the absence of classical music among the popular music that many young people listen to today, and the reason behind it is simply due to the assumption that the genre is outdated and unlike the stimulation of modern music. “I think the huge misconception is that the only thing that people ever know is Beethoven, but there’s so much more to it that’s overlooked.”

With her post-secondary plans set on growing as a classical musician in university, Lago described the core of the reason why she is so passionate about creating music, “That’s why I like what I do, because you get to see the world in a different point of view. You get to experience things deeper because you are sensitive to the feelings behind music, and then you identify the emotions in yourself, and then you say, ‘You know what? I want my audience to feel that.’”