My Musical Culture

Hello! My name is Ahdiayah Horton, although most people just call me Ahdi for short. I am a Senior at Converse majoring in Viola Performance and I am very excited to graduate this Spring. I've been involved in classical music for about 11 years now and I've played the Violin for 8 years. Although I was very involved in orchestra through middle school and high school, I did not think of it as a career until I started college. 

I was born in Providence, Rhode Island and moved here to Spartanburg at the age of five. My hobbies are listening to music and taking naps. I don't really travel that often, especially not now, but I do really like Baltimore and Orlando. In the next couple of weeks I will be traveling to different grad schools for auditions, so I hope to have fun getting to visit those different cities.

Music is something that is really important to me and I hope to share how I view music with you. 

1. My current go-to right now is Antonín Dvořák's, Symphony No.7.  This past summer I had the chance to perform this as section leader at Eastern Musical Festival so I really got to know and love this piece. I find myself thinking about the camp a lot because it was my first time in years getting to play larger orchestral works. This piece holds a really special place in my heart and it is really charming. I can listen to this piece at any given moment because I think it's flexible to any mood. I listen to it while I'm in the shower, while I'm sleeping, while I'm studying or just for fun.

2. A song that has resonated with me for a long time is Sam Smith’s Lay Me Down. The album this track is on came out around the time I was in middle school and they became one of my favorite singers. I think many people deal with sadness at some point in their lives, if not all the time. One of the ways I cope is by listening to this song. There was a time in middle school where I would stay up all night and just listen to music because I was overwhelmed. I often would sleep on the floor in my room and crack open the window while doing so. I use this song often to have a sense of normalcy or familiarity during times where I am really anxious or I am feeling super stressed to help calm myself down.

3. An example of music I don't connect with. I usually don’t have a hard time branching out into different genres of music. When I find a new genre or subgenre I listen to many songs in that category and end up finding artists that I like and will continue to listen to. One person that I cannot listen to is Taylor Swift. I have nothing against her but T-Swift’s music is really not my vibe. I like to listen to music that speaks to me in a sense but her music just doesn’t do it for me. Due to this I am not that familiar with her music but here is a song of hers as an example: