Aussie Alicia Casey first heard the violin when she was three. Immediately smitten with the stringed instrument, the toddler began entreating her parents to let her play, or so she's told.
"I don't remember it, but my parents told me I just kept begging to play the violin until they let me," said Casey in a recent interview with the Advocate.
Growing up in North Queensland, Australia, Casey continued studying the violin using the Suzuki method—which focuses on complete musical immersion starting from a very young age—until she went to college at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music, where she employed a more traditional method.
Before coming to the U.S. to study in the UMass-Amherst master's degree program last fall, Casey toured Europe for two months with the Australian Youth Orchestra and performed with the Labyrinth Quartet during its tour of the Australian outback for the 2007 National Chamber Music Festival. The 22-year old violinist has also had the honor of playing as a member of the prestigious Camerata of St. John's in Brisbane, a professional orchestra which selects very few students to join its ranks.
Stateside, Casey is trying to get as much performing experience as possible. The violinist performs with Opus One, a chamber orchestra, the Graduate String Quartet and the University Orchestra.
"I'm just enjoying the opportunity to get to play in a lot of different groups," said Casey. "I'm trying to build up my repertoire."
Casey's repertoire now includes a piece that she has been learning for over seven years: Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto. She first heard the piece played in a master class at a summer music school when she was 14.
"I don't know what it is about that particular piece that makes me want to play it," said Casey. "It's one of the hard ones—definitely a challenge. When I first heard the piece there was no way I could play it, but I wasn't going to stop until I could play it."
Casey has certainly met her goal: in March, the master's student played the difficult Tchaikovsky piece in the University Orchestra's Concerto Competition and beat roughly 20 other student musicians—both graduate and undergraduate—to win the musical showdown.
This weekend, Casey performs the first movement of the Violin Concerto at the University Orchestra's spring concert. The concert also features Tchaikovsky's "Polonaise" from the opera Eugene Onegin; Brahms' Double Concerto in A minor, featuring faculty soloists violinist Elizabeth Chang and cellist Astrid Schween; and a new piece by UMass professor Emanuel Rubin, In Memoriam: Liviu Librescu. The work was inspired by the Virginia Tech faculty member, a Holocaust survivor, who barred a shooter's entry to his classroom, sacrificing his life to prevent his students from being victims of the massacre.
Slated to remain at UMass for a few more years, Casey hopes to eventually secure a spot in a traveling chamber orchestra and explore more of the United States before returning home to Australia. But for now, the violin virtuoso is content to enjoy the long-awaited springtime.
"I really enjoyed fall with all the leaves changing color," said Casey. "And I was incredibly excited for winter—it was the first time I had ever seen snow. I was out there acting like a five-year-old. But four months later I'm saying, 'Okay, enough of the cold already.'"
The University Orchestra's Concert takes place on Friday, April 18 at 8 p.m. in UMass-Amherst's Fine Arts Center Concert Hall. Tickets are $3-5/students, kids and seniors, and $10/general. Call (413) 545-2511 for tickets and more information.
