[cacophony of instruments warming up]
Becoming a professional musician
is hard work.
It takes dedication,
practice, [saxophone flourish]
all that jazz.
That's Colin Orth's dream.
- Colin Orth: I want to be a traveling musician.
First of all, I love traveling.
I love going to different places
that I haven't been to before.
New experiences, things like that.
[director claps rhythmically]
- One, two, one, two, three, four.
? ?
- Angela: Colin plays trumpet
in the Chippewa Falls High School Jazz Band.
[playing trumpet powerfully]
- Colin Orth: I love how it stands out.
I like how you can always hear a trumpet in a band.
There's no hiding when you're playing the trumpet.
[stately trumpeting]
If you ever hide when you're playing trumpet,
you're not playing trumpet correctly.
? ?
[trumpets in a jazz sound]
- Angela: The trumpet helped Colin find focus,
especially since his childhood
wasn't always so harmonious.
[trumpeting sustained note]
As a newborn, Colin's skin seemed to bruise easily,
enough to worry his mother, Angie.
- He was bruised frequently,
and when you're the parent staying home
with your new baby, and your baby's bruised,
you start to have some alarm.
The baby's going to the doctor frequently
during those first few months anyway for inoculations,
so I would bring those to her attention,
and she was concerned enough,
after a few months of us seeing this pattern,
that she referred us to Rochester, where he
went to see the hematologist.
- Angela: At five months old,
Colin was diagnosed with severe hemophilia B.
It means his blood is missing a protein
that helps it clot naturally.
- Let's say, if I get a small cut,
it might bleed for a little bit longer than somebody else.
- Angela: It also creates
a much higher risk of internal bleeding
from everyday activity,
especially in joints like the elbows, wrists, or knees.
- Angie Sterling-Orth: A bleed would be
an injury to a joint or muscle that causes bleeding
to happen under the surface
so the bleeding does not stop.
In the hemophilia world, they call it "a bleed."
- Angela: Colin manages his hemophilia with medicine,
an infusion of the missing protein
into his blood every 10 days.
- Colin: I'd say, I have to be
a little more careful than regular people,
but it's nothing that holds me back
from doing other activities and things like that.
- Angela: One day soon,
Colin will leave home
and be on his own.
That's a scary day for any parent,
but especially when
a child's health depends
on a strict self-care schedule.
- Angie Sterling-Orth: He's getting older.
He knows how to take care of himself,
but we're letting him have more independence.
So we're getting to that point
we're going to have to let him go,
trusting that self-care will follow.
We'll see.
- Angela: In 2018, Angie found help
from an unlikely source:
her Twitter feed.
The CEO of a production company
was auditioning teams with bleeding disorders
for a show in New York City.
The title?
Breaking Through! Hemophilia: The Musical .
- Angie: It felt really surreal,
but I followed the link and I looked at it.
When he got home from camp, I said, "You gotta look at this,"
and I think he thought it was surreal, too.
- Hello, this is Colin Orth,
applying for the Break Through!
musical in New York City.
["Love Shack" B-52's] So, I sent him a recording of me singing
some of my favorite songs,
and sure enough,
they emailed back in a couple weeks
saying that, "Congratulations, you're in."
- Angela: Colin flew to New York
to rehearse and perform in a Broadway-style show,
a traveling musician's dream.
When I went to New York, I finally
felt like I actually took my first step
into the professional music business.
- Scene One:
Friends reunite after summer months.
For some, it's their first day in high school.
- Angela: One goal of the musical was
to raise awareness about bleeding disorders.
- ? Why was I chosen? ?
? Why was it me? ?
- It gave me goosebumps and it made me cry.
- ? And the pain ?
? Doesn't fade ?
- Colin: It made me feel really nice
that hemophilia is getting a lot more attention
than it has in the past.
- ? I'm still here today ?
- Angela: More importantly,
it encouraged the actors to take care of themselves
as they enter adulthood.
- Angie: We've done all this work for 18 years
to prepare, to get him to this next stage.
So, we have to just
jump in and know that it will go well.
- ? It's a no, no, no ?
- Angie: Some of those messages in those songs
were good for me to hear and see that it will be okay.
- ? Don't think you're all alone ?
? Hard times have made us grow ?
? To be the person you're meant to be ?
[metronome pulsing]
- Colin: Here's your tempo.
- Angela: Colin plans to double-major in music
and either business or marketing.
[band playing] - Colin: ? Ba-dah-buh ?
- Angie: I think whatever he does,
whether it's performing as a professional trumpet player,
if it's music post-production, or running
a trumpet gear shop, or whatever it is,
his leadership skills
will really support him through that.
- Colin: I get to play this instrument,
and I might be able to make a future out of it,
and I love doing it.
- No matter what happens, [Colin playing piano]
his brush with Broadway gave him the confidence
to keep hitting those high notes.
- ? I'm feeling free ?
? And loving life ?
- Never let the other people
that have negative comments toward you
bring you down.
Know that you have an entire community
of people like us.
- ? Life ?
- Colin: That will push you up
and never let you down.
[audience cheers, applauds, and hollers "Whoo!"]
- Cast: Thank you!