“In order for anything to change your life, you gotta treat it like it’s gonna change your life.” This is a motto that recent Juilliard grad Sean Edwards lives by. Today we find out more about Sean and his continuous journey with music.
Sean, tell us about yourself today.
Like you said, I’m a recent Juilliard graduate. I’m from the South Side of Chicago. I play percussion. That’s me.
I see you. All right. Let’s get started. I wanna know what made you start taking music seriously. Who put that first instrument or microphone in your hand?
So, I started playing music in like third grade. You know, I was put in band. I used to get in trouble a lot for like tapping on desks and stuff, so they allowed me to join the band early.
From there, I went to a group called Percussion Scholarship Program in Chicago — South — well, not South Side of Chicago, in Chicago — under the direction of Douglas Waddell and Patricia Dash.
And you know, they allowed me to take percussion lessons. They offered them for free, which was very beneficial to my career path.
You know? But I don’t think I took music seriously then. You know, keep in mind — it’s fourth grade. You know, going with the flow, everything, doing what my parents tell me to do. I didn’t really start taking music seriously until I started seeing that it could change my life.
And once I started to see that, it’s like, you know, in order for anything to change your life, you gotta treat it like it’s gonna change your life. So coming from the South Side of Chicago, I think at 15, that’s when I got accepted to the National Youth Orchestra.
That was like the [first] year that they did NYO2. So from there, they flew me out. I went out to New York for the first time, went to Philly, Miami — you know, like a mini-tour.
Seeing that, that like motivated me to start doing more. And then I start, like, you know, winning these competitions. I received scholarships. I started being placed in rooms where I could start seeing different opportunities, and it also allowed for different opportunities to see me, you know? So this has been a build to that.
How was that transition into Juilliard? And what lessons did you take being from the South Side of Chicago into a big city like New York — two different, two completely different sides of the spectrum in terms of environment?
Yeah. Well, I wanna say, I wanna start by saying New York and Chicago, they’re a lot more similar than I expected them to be. New York is like Chicago on steroids. But within that though, I would say the Juilliard experience is like its own little bubble.
You know, to really answer your question, I don’t really feel like … I feel like my experience at Juilliard was kind of like unlearning and redirecting the things that I learned growing up, in terms of learning to communicate effectively, learning to articulate myself, becoming aware of my emotions.
It’s like growing up like that, it’s almost like we’re taught to … not even hide emotions — just not have emotions almost.
What stories or emotions would you say you’re most drawn to express, like through your music and whatever you may create?
My job is just to bring the vision of the composer and give life to that. Of course, I have my own interpretations of that, but it’s in the framework of their vision.
Let’s use like Beethoven or Bach. So when I’m playing a new piece by them, I go and I find the recordings and stuff, and then I see, like, all right, this is certain things that are set in stone. This is the framework of it. And then you have — it’s like, all right, they did this, they did this.
It becomes a game of like telephone. You know, it’s like I’m figuring out like, all right, I like what they did, I don’t really like what they did. I think I can do this. So you know, it becomes that type of thing.
And then there’s another flip side of it when you’re working with like living composers, where it’s like, all right cool, I have access to the primary source now. So, it’s like I know exactly how they want it. I can give my own feedback about like, “Oh, I think this sounds better if it’s like this.”
So how would you say your background is reflected within the music, in terms of who you are and where you came from?
It’s difficult, I don’t really have the opportunity to do that much. But I will say, it’s reflected in the way that I hear the music.
Growing up, you have the type of music that you’re drawn to, right? Whether it’s like, whatever that is. That changes the way that you hear the music, or you experience or you express the music.
Black people tend to be more rhythmically inclined. We hear the music like — you know — soul music. So where is that? So the way we intake this and put it back out is gonna reflect that, you know? I hope that makes sense.
What challenges do you face like as a Black man in the music world?
The biggest challenge was just accepting the fact that I belong in any room that God puts me in, which is not always the easiest to accept when, like a lot of the times, I am the only person that looks like me or has had the same experiences that I’ve had — which a lot of times I feel like is more important than skin color.
To be honest, like, I know a lot of times we bring it back to the whole skin color thing, but it’s like we bond over … I believe that we bond over experiences, not skin color.
How have your injuries impacted your journey, slowed you down, or maybe taken you on a different route, maybe forced you to learn a new skill? Just tell us a story about those.
All right, so I’ll start with the wrist first. Just ’cause I kind of laugh about that one now. We [were] playing basketball.
I was feeling it. I was hot this game. I’m like, you know what? I’m gonna dunk on this man. And this dude, he’s super tall, bro, he’s actually like 6’5″. But I was thinking, I’m driving, I’m like, you know what? I’m gonna go for it. I go up. I don’t even think bro jumped. He didn’t even jump. He put his hands up, and I just came down.
But from there I’m like — it was scary at first, just because it’s like, just a bunch of uncertainty. Just about how it’s gonna affect my career, my plan. Will I be able to play the same.
But it ended up being a blessing though, ’cause it allowed me to take that break from the music to kind of like — [T]ake the break while I was still in school. So it was like, even though I was still so close to it, I was still very far removed from it, because I’m just — I’m not able to do anything. It made me hungry in a sense.
And then it also helped me get my love back for it, because I’m like — I had to start over from ground zero, reworking that wrist up again.
What’s next for you?
What’s next for me — well, I’ll be continuing my education. I’m going to San Francisco Conservatory of Music to get my master’s.
I do have — so my friend, my great friend — really a brother now — and composer Christopher Armstrong, he wrote a piece for me that I commissioned last month, but that should be releasing on social media sometime in the fall. And yeah, that’s what’s next.
What song do you currently have on repeat every single day?
“Much Generator – Escapades” — it’s a piece by John Williams. He’s a film composer. So this was from the Catch Me If You Can movie — that I actually haven’t even seen yet. On another note — I won’t really give you songs, but I’ll give like artists. I listen to — you know, heavy. Just being from Chicago, you know, gotta support G Herbo.
