Today we’d like to introduce you to Zoe Mark.
Hi Zoe, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I can be a very literal person, so when I heard all the college advice about “trying new things” and to explore new activities, I took it very seriously. I decided to major in mechanical engineering despite no previous interest and dropping out of the advanced math track to take Jazz Band instead of AP Calculus BC. It should have been a sign. I look back and wonder why it wasn’t obvious to myself, but I think I wasn’t ready to commit to the idea of being a musician. So, I went to undergrad for engineering and was deeply unsatisfied. I was spending all day playing the trumpet and had joined five different ensembles. I spent most of my time in the music department, it was then that I finally realized I should give this a try. I ended up transferring to a different school with a more rigorous music program and was very happy. At my new school, I had the opportunity to play in the pit orchestra for an opera. It was a Mozart opera, so even though I spent a lot of the time counting rests, there was something magical about it. From that experience, I knew I wanted a job in an opera or ballet pit orchestra. I went on to my master’s after graduation, but the vision felt a little bit unclear. There was something missing from it. It was then that I began to explore other creative interests. One of my siblings had been pestering me for some time to give quilting a try. It was during my first semester of graduate school that I finally caved in. I was hooked. Not only was it relaxing, creative, and fulfilling, but it also provided me with another way to connect with them. It was much easier to chat on Facetime about color choices or how to get the bobbin tension right than to talk about homework or our classes. We each had our own stress of being in graduate school; we didn’t really have the bandwidth to talk about that, but we could talk about quilting. I think the part of quilting that works well for me is the definite end. With music and practicing, there is always something that could be fixed, next time might be better, it is never complete. With sewing a quilt, when the row ends and the fabric runs out, it’s done. At the end of the day, you walk away with a completed quilt that can go on your bed or the couch, or you can walk around with it over your shoulders. The completeness of it is not up for debate. As I was becoming more immersed in the world of quilting and music, I realized that these activities that I had started separately had a lot more common ground than I initially realized. I began to make quilts that were inspired by the music I was working on. I created a throughline story between the music and the quilts and began to think more deeply about the message that musicians share with their audience. At this point in my degree, I had become a bit disillusioned with the state of concerts and recitals, they felt disconnected from the audience and classical music felt so stuffy. I wanted to create a new type of concert experience, a more immersive concert, and so I began to brainstorm a new type of concert. I am so excited that later this February, I will be able to put on this recital, a manifestation of months of work. I see this recital as the first iteration of this evolving project, and I can’t wait to see what direction it takes next.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I would not use smooth to describe the road that got me here, but I am so glad to be where I am now. When I transferred, I felt so far behind my peers. Many of them had been taking lessons since high school, and I felt like I had so much to catch up on. I put in a lot of work, but it was hard to not compare myself to where I could be if only I had started out going to school for trumpet. I got stuck in a cycle of comparison, and from there, I had to learn how to set boundaries with myself and with other people.
The further along I get in this career, the more I realize how many people are continuing because they don’t know what else to do, not because they are enjoying themselves. This is a rut that I got stuck inside, and I got in my own way. I learned the hard way, if you talk badly about yourself enough times, you will start to believe it. It takes a lot to reset that mental image of yourself especially with the constant feedback. In school we go to lessons, rehearsals, masterclasses, and play duets with peers. In all these situations we get a constant stream of feedback. It feels very personal because music is personal. It takes a lot of time to learn how to sort through all the information to learn how to use it in a constructive way instead of a destructive way. Once I learned how to do that, I was able to have a much healthier relationship with the trumpet. And honestly, there is nothing else I want to spend my day doing. Any time I have tried anything else, I always come back to the trumpet.
Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I consider myself both a multi-media artist and a musician. I am working to create immersive concert experiences, different than what you experience going to a classical music concert. Through textile arts, music and the location I hope to ask the audience to consider questions that they don’t regularly get asked. Right now, I am working on putting together a program that asks, “How do we occupy space?” With three contemporary trumpet works asking different questions. Enter Ghost by Judith Bingham is asking how we interact with a space that we can’t reach through, a piece inspired by Hamlet’s conversation with his dead father. Solo Ascent by Jenna Veverka is forcing us to think about our intentional choices of space, how do we choose to act or enter into a new space? And finally, Zero-G by Eris DeJarnett brings us out to literal space by playing along with an electronic track of sounds from space that NASA uploaded onto their SoundCloud. How do we imagine ourselves and our future? Each of these will be paired with a quilt that was inspired by each piece, as well as quilting itself occupying a unique space. I will talk about the history of quilting and tie it all together. Quilting is at once both utilitarian, it keeps us warm, and it is also a piece of art constructed meticulously over countless hours. Since its beginning, quilting has created spaces for women to gather and discuss topics that they might not otherwise have been able to. It has also been political since the beginning, as women would make quilts to auction off for their political causes. I am so grateful to have found these two mediums to bring everything together. I am so excited for this February recital as it will be a culmination of months of brainstorming and practicing, and I can’t wait to see how it evolves after this.
My dream project would be to team up with a historical building and ask the question, “What have these windows seen? What would the previous person standing here have seen?” This is especially fun because many historical buildings have original windows, so we have this physical connection that still stands, connecting us to the past and showing us the present. It would be a month-long exhibit where a resident chamber group with specially curated music plays as people walk around a room, and quilts with potential scenes from the windows, both past, present, and future, hang from the walls. There would be a table with fabric scraps, paper, and glue where viewers can create their own blocks that go on a wall to create their own community quilt.
I think one of the things I am most proud of is my creativity and ability to pivot. These things go hand in hand, and I think that is how I have ended up here instead of an engineer. When I was transferring schools, there were so many fellow students who would say to me, “I wish I could do that too,” and that’s where it ended for them. My ability to imagine something different and then work towards it is a skill that I feel the most proud of because it is what has brought me here to today. I consider it to be my most important skillset (other than being able to fix broken printers.) It was a really big jump to transfer to a music school, I had no idea what I was doing, and was quite frankly not very good at the trumpet at the time. I just had a willingness to try.
Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
I honestly think luck is a bit overrated. An instructor in a marching band once told us, “Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.” And that’s what has gotten me through music school. There are countless talented musicians, but when they rely only on their talent, they begin to fall behind. The trumpet did not come easy for me; I did not have a natural affinity for it, so when people say, “Oh, you are so lucky to have such a clear tone,” that upsets me; it is not the compliment that they think it is because it is erasing all the hard work and hours in a practice room that I put in to make it appear easy when I play for you. Now, I do believe there is a “right place, right time” type of luck, but even that takes work to get yourself into those places. Outside of my work, the one way that I feel truly lucky is from the support that I get from my family. I would not have made it through this roller-coaster if it weren’t for them.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @zoeplaystrumpet
Image Credits
Josh Mark
