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Day in the life of a music performance student

View the photo gallery above, showcasing a day in the life of a Crane student. 

Paul Mardy ’18 has been playing the saxophone since he was 10 years old.

“When my mom first bought my saxophone, she said, ‘you better be really good at this, because it was really expensive,’” Mardy recalled.

He didn’t let her down. Mardy is graduating from The Crane School of Music this semester as the only Crane student to ever receive a double performance degree in two woodwind instruments—the saxophone and clarinet. He is also the winner of several competitions including the 2016 Crane Concerto Competition, the 2017 Crane Chamber Music Competition and the 2017 Richard Stephens String Chamber Competition.

During his senior year, he performed with the Crane Symphony Orchestra, the Crane Wind Ensemble, the Northern Symphonic Winds, the Crane Opera Orchestra and the United States Air Force Band. He has also taught saxophone lessons to two undergraduate students, including Theresa Discavage '20 who he helped to prepare for an audition at The Crane School of Music. On top of all that, he found the time to complete a photography internship and he photographed many of his fellow Crane students as a side business on campus.

In the summer of 2018, he worked at the College Light Opera Company in Cape Cod, Mass., where he played the clarinet, saxophone, flute and bass clarinet in the orchestra pit for 10 opera productions. He's now attending the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston where he is pursuing a master’s degree in saxophone performance. Even more notable, in the fall of 2018, shortly after arriving in Boston, he was appointed Principal Clarinet in the Boston Symphony Youth Orchestra.

- Photography by Jason Hunter