How old were you when you started composing?
10

What do you love most about composing music?
What I love most about composing music is the ability to create entire worlds of sound from nothing but a feeling, a story, or an idea. Another aspect I love is the freedom it gives to experiment and explore, especially when playing with different textures and techniques. I love learning about new things and being able to create something that has endless sequences really makes me alive.

Tell us a little about how the poetry influenced your IYWCC composition.
Nothing Gold Can Stay is a poem by Robert Frost. The poem captures ideas about impermanence, beauty, and the fleeting nature of innocence. This poem resonates with me because of its theme about the passage of time. Other than the poem, I wanted to add a bit more of just that. I added my own lyrics to show that because of how short beautiful things are, we can treasure them more. I wanted to show that even though the joy is temporary, so is the sorrow. Time is the culprit for taking away our innocence, but it also heals us from our pains. Altogether, it is the goodness and the sadness that makes everything more emotional and enjoyable.

What was your process/approach to composing your piece for IYWCC?
I like to outline my piece and the mood it makes first. For example I started off on the negative side of how it sounds, then shifted to more hopeful and positive to resolve.

What is your advice to someone who is interested in composing a piece but does not know where to start?
Score studying is what helped me learn the most. Questioning the purpose of every decision a composer names in their piece is the origin of learning. It is very important to look through the depths of where you can go in every aspect of music. For example, how hard can the music be? How easy? How fast? How slow? How pretty? How chaotic? How many rests can I add here? How long can the notes be? How expressive? How creative? How plain? How emotional?

Tell us a fun fact about yourself!
I love thinking!