Two WVC music students accepted to music programs

 

Jenaesha Iwaasa performs at the WVC Music and Art Center Grand Opening.

Wenatchee Valley College music student Jenaesha Iwaasa's senior recital, which includes fellow music student and scholarship winner Katrina Whitman as a guest performer, is Thursday, June 13, at 7 p.m. in The Grove Recital Hall, WVC Music and Art Center, on the Wenatchee campus. This event is free and open to the public.

Iwaasa, a cellist, and Whitman, a violist, began attending WVC at the same time and have known one another since they met at Icicle Creek, where they were both taking lessons. They have performed together in the Icicle Creek Youth Symphony and Summer Symphony, the Wenatchee Valley Symphony, and string and chamber camps at Central Washington University.

Both are Running Start students, and both will graduate with their high school diplomas and WVC transfer degrees this June.

Iwaasa has been accepted to the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University in Houston, Texas, and Whitman has been accepted to Westmont in Santa Barbara, Calif. Both have been awarded scholarships locally and from their four-year schools.

Iwaasa will have the opportunity to study with cellist Norman Fischer. She received one of two Roy W. Hill Music Scholarships and the Nick Schoffen Music Scholarship from the Community Foundation of North Central Washington, the Wenatchee Valley Teachers Association Scholarship, a Community Involvement Scholarship and the Top Ten Scholarship from the Apple Blossom Festival, and a four-year renewable $50,000 scholarship from Rice University.

Iwaasa has played the cello since she was eight years old. She has taken lessons from local music instructor Kara Hunnicutt, as well as Craig Weaver from the Twisp/Methow area and Kevin Krentz from Seattle. She now takes lessons with Sally Singer Tuttle and studies music theory at WVC with her father, music director Juel Iwaasa.

At twelve years old, she was asked by an instructor whether she had considered playing the cello as a career. She now provides music lessons herself, teaching both piano and cello, but she's keeping her career options open. "I'm ready for whatever opportunities are available," she said. "I'm happy to see where going to Rice takes me."

Rice University has phenomenal teachers, she explained, and she really wants to study with the cello instructor there.

Whitman will have the opportunity to study with violist Helen Callus at Westmont. Whitman has received the Roy W. Hill Music Scholarship from the Community Foundation of North Central Washington and an $11,000 per year music major scholarship from Westmont.

Encouraged by her mother, who is a harpist, Whitman began playing the viola when she was six. She has studied at Icicle Creek in Leavenworth with Jennifer Caine and at Central Washington University with Tim Betts.

Her goal is to teach at a university or college and perform in a residential quartet. "Music is my passion," Whitman said. "It's what I'm good at, what I love to do."