Like other middle school students, Simon Walrod faced a choice: Band or choir?
He knew he didn’t want to sing. But he also didn’t know what he wanted to play.
Until the day he picked up the drumsticks.
Years later, that choice put the now EHS senior on the path to playing at Carnegie Hall this weekend.
Walrod was nominated by his band director Damian Johnson for the Honors Performance Series High School Orchestra and was selected last fall based on his audition tape. He was ecstatic when he found out.
“I was sitting in English class and I almost started, like, screaming out loud because I was so happy,” Walrod said.
He was nominated and wanted to audition for the same opportunity last year, but was not aware he needed to send in an audition tape until the deadline passed, he said.
This year, he was more than prepared, especially since the music required for the audition was the same as the district music he played last school year.
However, Walrod said he never thought he would be able to make it to the performance due to the travel expenses necessary to make it to New York City where the performance is taking place.
“I kind of thought it would be more of a thing where I got accepted but never went,” he said.
The EHS senior said he did not want this to just be an opportunity that he had and never acted on, so he decided to start a GoFundMe fundraiser in early January. Walrod met his initial goal in less than two weeks and managed to raise over $4,000, almost twice his initial goal, by the end of the month.
“For the first three days, I got a little bit and it was cool, but nowhere near enough what I thought,” Walrod said. “I just started sharing it with everyone in my contacts list and asking them to share it, and it blew up from there.”
Johnson said he didn’t know about the fundraiser until he heard about it from people in the community, but was not surprised to find out Walrod took the initiative to make the trip happen.
“I’ve just learned not to tell Simon no to anything, because if I tell him no that’s like his trigger word,” Johnson said. “Simon is one of those that will figure out how to make things happen.”
Johnson, who has been Walrod’s band instructor since he was in middle school, said Walrod is very hardworking and often stays after school to practice drums in the band room.
“I think you could ask any student or any person involved in music and they would probably tell you that Simon is the hardest worker of all of them,” Johnson said.
Walrod only has an electric drum kit at home and can’t play often since his father works from home and his mother runs a day careout of the home, Walrod said.
He hopes to make a career out of drumming one day and is excited to get one step closer to that dream by performing in Carnegie Hall this weekend.
“It gives me something to do that I’m good at, and it kind of gives me a purpose in life if that makes sense,” he said.
Walrod is participating in a five-day itinerary that includes sightseeing, a Broadway show, rehearsals and finally a performance this Saturday at the famed music venue, according to the website.
Reach reporter Alyssa Wingo at [email protected].
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