April 1, 1998
Music prodigy keeps upbeat with percussion
By Eric Dick
Herald editor
At 2, Gwen Burgett took up violin and piano. By 9, she played flute. By 12, she discovered percussion.
At 17 she will graduate in May as a junior from Interlochen Arts Academy.
Gifted would seem an understatement.
"It's incredible," said her mother, Ruth Burgett of Traverse City.
But not surprising. After all, Ruth, a piano teacher, started both her daughter and son, John, out playing at a young age. Ruth, herself, also played harp and cello. John later played clarinet. Gwen played flute.
Then life's road began to twist. John, Gwen's favorite playing partner and only sibling, died of cancer at 14. She was 9.
A few year's later Gwen picked up percussion, calling it music that makes people happy rather than violin which makes people sad.
Her parents, meanwhile, looking for a friendly school to help fill the void left by the death of her brother, sent Gwen off to audition at the prestigious music academy in Interlochen.
"Our children's education has always been first in our mind," said Ruth, who along with her husband, John, an actuary, moved from St. Louis to Traverse City three years ago to be closer to their daughter while she attended the academy.
Gwen's audition at Interlochen was an ear-opening experience. Instructors asked her to tune a timpani. She did - entirely by ear without the aid of a tuning fork, a rare talent called "perfect pitch."
"It just flows out of her," her mother, Ruth, explained. "She just picks up the instrument and zoom. It just seems to be her gift."
From 1992 to 1995 Gwen attended Interlochen Arts Camp in the summer to study violin. But by 1996 she abandoned the instrument to concentrate as a full-time student on percussion.
As a percussionist at Interlochen, she has flourished. The camaraderie of the other students as well as the emphasis on academics and the arts has proved worthwhile.
"It has helped her blossom in a way that you can't imagine," Ruth Burgett said.
The accolades keep piling up. This year she won the Avedis Zildjian Scholarship, and she is the principal percussion of the academy orchestra. Last year she won the academy's concerto competition, playing marimba, and in 1996 she served as principal percussion for the World Youth Symphony Orchestra when it performed during the Summer Olympics in Atlanta.
"She's a very, very motivated young woman," said Rick Gould, spokesman for Interlochen Center for the Arts.
The music, Gwen said, just comes to her. "I'll be practicing something and I won't get it, and then just one day I'll get it really fast."
Now, with graduation approaching, Gwen awaits word on her recent auditions at four schools: University of Rochester Eastman School of Music and Juliard School of Music, both in New York; New England Conservatory of Music in Boston; and University of Michigan.
Meanwhile, the Presidential Scholar nominee and former Governor's Scholar contemplates her musical future.
"I want to perform," she said, "but I don't know how or what."