Issue link: http://maconmagazine.uberflip.com/i/1184236
9 8 M ACO N M AG A Z I N E.CO M | O C TO B E R / N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 9 The Maconites tell our stor y. This project originally was funded by The Downtown Challenge Fund of the Community Foundation of Central Georgia, created to implement the Macon Action Plan through a series of grants to local businesses, nonprof its, individuals and government entities. To read the Macon Action Plan, visit MaconActionPlan.com. See full stories at: themaconites.com WHY DOES MY MUSIC MATTER? That's what I'm trying to figure out. I'm trying to get good enough in school so that I can ... make my own music matter. I played ... in Rome with Mr. McDuffie. I was in his quartet. We did the Brahms piano quartet, and he grilled me alive every single rehearsal. He was so rough on me, and it was a very enriching experience. But, he refused to conduct the rehearsals in English. He speaks Italian, which I did not know until the first rehearsal. But at the end of the performance ... he told me he'd never been more proud of me and that ... he was just so intense and so demanding because he said he knew that I could take it and he knew that it would get a fantastic performance out of me and out of our quartet – and it did. Music matters to me because there are so many things that you can't put into words, that are easier to put into music, that are able to be expressed more through music. There's a lot of different examples of composers even being able to enact tons of social change through music and through composing and performing and writing. Even an example here ... we had the 'What Color is Your Brother?' concert. That was a hugely inspiring concert for me because I could tell how much it meant to the community. It was a completely packed audience and ... audience members were in the church across the street, watching the live stream. " I think it was meaningful to so many people ... because they could see that it was meaningful to so many other people ... so many different slices of Macon came into this sort of cohesive, almost ode, to the city. The reason music feeds my soul is connecting with people. I think that's kind of all we ... have in life is the relationships that we forge with other people." – KEONI