Colette Wiering is a fifth grader from Two Rivers, Wisconsin. She has a favorite spot in her heart for Tchaikovsky's violin concerto, but she greatly appreciates the character of Bach's music. "I like Bach's way of hiding phrases inside a script of black notes that look hard to play. The musical phrases come back and they have a surprising different end. Sometimes he'll do the same phrase, but in a relative key. Bach has these sequences that go up and down like a butterfly. Or they are like large waves made up of little wavelets. And when a wave crashes, another one comes up.  That's how the sequences in Bach follow each other." 

Colette has been surprised this year by a series of firsts: her first year playing in an ensemble, her first time winning a competition, her first time playing in a masterclass, and her first time performing solo with an orchestra.  

Many thanks to MYSO for making these opportunities possible. Colette would also like to thank her teachers and especially her sister, Stella O'Neill, for giving her twice weekly Zoom music theory lessons.