- My name is Ellen Zhou,
and I am an 11th grader at Middleton High School.
- Clark Snavely.
I am 16 years old.
I'm a homeschooler from New Berlin.
- I'm Jane Story.
I'm 15 years old.
I'm from Stevens Point.
- Zak Chen.
I'm 16 years old.
I'm a junior at New Berlin Eisenhower.
I started playing violin when I was four years old.
- All my life I've been pretty competitive as a person.
- Both my parents are musicians.
- My dad would take me to all the university orchestra concerts
and I liked violin so much that I wanted to try it out.
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- Violin allows me
to kind of focus on something completely different.
There's a lot of effort physically and mentally.
- I've learned to be more sensitive
when playing in an orchestra
and it's definitely taught me a lot about playing the violin.
- Zak and I met in orchestra.
He and I are both 16 and our brothers are both 14
so it's meant to be that we're just great friends.
- I think it's really fun
to have a different experience in the arts
and perform in a different way.
- Are you a good witch or a bad witch?
- I like to run a lot.
I do cross country and I do track.
- We play a lot of ping pong together, which is a ton of fun.
We also play foosball.
- With skiing, once you get that sort of rhythm,
you can just go down the hill without even thinking about it.
Developing the muscle memory definitely helps me
let go and stop overthinking when I'm on a stage.
- It's been my dream to make it
to the finals of the Bolz Young Artist Competition.
- I think it's just amazing that I get to solo
with the Madison Symphony.
- You put so much time and effort into preparing
and then it all leads up to 10, 20 minutes playing.
- Studying music is amazing
because you get to see yourself constantly grow and improve.
- Of course, it is challenging,
but the challenge is definitely welcome.
- And the amount of self satisfaction is incomparable.
- I'm not afraid to push myself in that way
and that really helps me grow as a person.
- And there's always something more you can learn.
- We haven't really talked about competing against each other
but we've won already getting to play in the Final Forte.
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