My name is Jordin Andrews. I am 22 years old and will be graduating this spring with a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Akron. My interest in music started in the fourth grade when I joined band and started to play the trumpet. In eighth grade I had the opportunity to switch to horn, which I eagerly accepted. From then on, playing the horn not only became a hobby but a passion – it didn’t take long for me to realize that I wanted to make playing horn my career. As I grew older, I joined every youth orchestra I possibly could – the Canton Youth Symphony Orchestra my sophomore year, the Akron Youth Symphony Orchestra and Cleveland Youth Wind Symphony my junior year, and the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra my senior year. In addition, I performed in nearly every local honor band I could, including the OMEA honor band and even won my high school’s concerto competition. I won the competition with Timothy Jackson’s Etude (Don’t Make it Bad), a piece I was totally enamored with at the time. That same year I was given the opportunity to travel with the Cleveland Youth Wind Symphony on their tour of Europe and perform as a soloist.
After graduating from high school, I decided to attend the University of Akron because I had earned enough scholarships there to pay for my tuition. My studies went very well for a couple of years – I excelled at music theory and actively participated in every ensemble and competition I could. But, during a scholarship competition in 2018, I noticed that I was shaking. Shaking wasn’t new to me, however; in fact, my doctor had even prescribed me a drug to help calm my shakes. But this time was different, the medication didn’t seem to help calm my tremor. I couldn’t figure out why this was happening but from that moment on, the shakes continued to persist severely throughout my daily life.
At the point of frustration, sometime later, I decided to seek out medical advice. It took nearly a year to receive a diagnosis but finally, on January 18th, 2019, I found out that I had a large brain tumor. The tumor, which was resting on the part of the brain that controls movement, the thalamus, was estimated to be approximately the size of a ripe peach. It was also determined that the tumor was most likely the cause of my tremor and that it wasn’t going to go away. I was devastated, not because of the tumor, but because I didn’t think I would ever be able to have a career as a musician. But after having brain surgery, six weeks of radiation therapy, and 13 months of chemotherapy, I realized I had gone through too much to simply give up on my goals. I knew that a career in performance was unlikely with my tremor, but I also knew that everything I had been through should empower me to do something great.
After a lot of thought, and conversations with my doctors and teachers, I realized that I was in a unique position to help other musicians. I didn’t want others to feel like they needed to give up on their careers because of a medical condition or unfortunate circumstance like I had. Now, in addition to working towards alleviating my tremors and recovering from my brain tumor, I want to take what I’ve learned, through personal experience, and use that knowledge to help others. I plan to create a business, specifically for musicians who are struggling with a disability, which not only empowers those musicians to keep playing but also helps to find solutions to overcome their disabilities so that no one feels like they have to give up on music. The solution can come in a variety of ways, whether it be physical therapy, medication, physical accommodations, surgery, or any combination of therapies. I hope to create a program with a collaborative approach, one that will involve engineers, doctors, and other musicians, all coming together to help find a solution to any issue a musician might face.
