Sebastian Fleming

Since my freshman year of high school, especially in my first year of college at Millikin University, I have blossomed as a cellist, mostly due to starting to take instruction from my long-time private teacher Dr. Jun Seo. The summer before my freshman year of high school, I went to a music camp in Omaha Nebraska, and engaged in various performance opportunities. Including at the end of the week when I got to play the chamber piece we had been working on and performed various works with the orchestra. While I was at Millikin University, I was under the instruction of award-winning cellist Amy Catron. I have been in various orchestras throughout my life, all suburban and school orchestras. During my schooling, I also competed a lot in local and state solo and ensemble competitions, almost always getting very good ratings or the best ratings throughout all of the years I competed in them. I have been playing cello for many years, about ten. Throughout high school, I was moderately gifted, in the sense that I have always been able to easily understand music, but during my freshman year of college, something switched. I was exposed to so much new music and was challenged every day to do my best every day that I eventually developed an ear for good pitch, and massively improved my sight-reading skills. In this past year I’ve pursued many avenues of creative expression on my cello but also on other instruments such as guitar. When I play my guitar, I am almost exclusively focusing on improvisation in the realms of jazz and the blues. I have also invested much time into writing poetry and drawing whatever may come to mind during my free time.