By Susan Gedutis Lindsay
Berklee.edu Correspondent
October 2005

	Photo by Liz Linder
	Kristy's Audio • "Over" - (Portishead) Arranged and performed by Kristy Foye Listen

Berklee music education major Kristy Foye is a bright spark that proves the old adage wrong: those who can do, teach. "Some people come to Berklee because they dream of becoming famous and traveling the world," she says. "But me, I'm passionate about having my own classroom and conducting a great orchestra filled with my very own students."

Foye is a classically trained cellist, but since the very first time she heard a bow pulled across the strings, she has had an interest in the sound of the cello in atypical styles of music. This is a musician who, at 9 years old, decided to play the cello after hearing her string teacher play the theme music from Jeopardy on it. "I was hooked," she says. "I thought it was the coolest sounding, most beautiful instrument I had ever seen or heard. I just had to play it."

Foye was a promising musician at a very young age. By high school, she had had opportunities to play at Symphony Hall and Tanglewood with her orchestra. "Playing pieces by Stravinsky and Berlioz in these halls made me realize that I wanted to pursue music for the rest of my life. Music made me feel whole and gave me a purpose in life."

Much to her instructors' consternation, however, she also was a fearless explorer on her instrument. "I was always the weird string player in orchestra, messing around with power chords and bass lines on the cello. I wanted to play klezmer, rock, and jazz. I wanted to hook up my cello to effects pedals and make noises." She was so set on playing other styles that she asked her high school instrumental instructor if she could join the jazz band. He laughed at her and turned her down. "'No way! Cellos don't belong in the jazz band,'" she remembers him saying. From that point, it was her mission to prove him wrong, and also to encourage other string players to follow their own musical interests, no matter how nontraditional.

In high school, Foye first encountered Berklee's open approach to contemporary music. In addition to studying cello, she also studied guitar with a Berklee student and visited Berklee to hear him perform with the Berklee Klezmer and Yiddish Ensemble. "This was the first time I had ever been to Berklee and the first time I had ever heard klezmer music. I was blown away. From then on I was set on going to Berklee to study this style of music."

That's when her cello teacher introduced her to Paula Zeitlin, the coach of a jazz string quartet at an area music school. Foye joined Zeitlin's group, and began playing jazz, while also studying classical technique with a private teacher. As she carved out her own niche as a cellist, she also became interested in teaching, driven by the desire to become the open-minded teacher that she wished she had had during her formative years. She enrolled in Berklee the next fall to study both performance and music education.

At Berklee, she immediately signed up for the Klezmer and Yiddish Ensemble. "I was so horrible at it my first semester in the group. The other students were upper semester and were just such better players than I was. I struggled, but ended up joining the ensemble about four more times after that." She also joined Mimi Rabson's String Improvisation Ensemble, and got her first shot at arranging and performing rock tunes for a small string ensemble. Meanwhile, fellow student Valerie Thompson, who was a senior at the time, took her under her wing. Thompson showed her around Berklee, gave her tips and advice, and helped her sound more like a klezmer cellist.

Cellist Kristy Foye polishes her clarinet skills in a music education class. Photo by Liz Linder   Kristy's Top Five: Albums Today's Berklee Student Should Know • Dry – PJ Harvey • Like Swimming – Morphine • Lavy's Dream – Davka • The Circle Maker – John Zorn/Masada • Grains of Paradise – Erik Friedlander

"I feel really lucky to have gone to Berklee, especially as a cellist," she says. "I've had the experience of playing in a variety of musical settings from the Berklee String Orchestra to the Contemporary Wind Ensemble to a rock band and a jazz string quartet."

Foye hopes to pass on all of her experiences to her future string students. "I want to encourage my students to explore music outside the classical world. I want them to compose, arrange, and improvise." She says she'll encourage her string students to join rock bands and improvise within a jazz band. Most importantly, she wants to share Berklee's open-mindedness with her future students, so that they can explore contemporary music too.

"I never want my students to feel limited or constricted to one type of music," says Foye, who plans to teach at the elementary or middle school levels. "I feel that Berklee has given me the knowledge to do all the things that I want to do and to influence the next generation of string players."

Foye says she still can't believe that she even goes to Berklee. "I've had so many wonderful experiences including getting the chance to meet Erik Friedlander, one of my favorite cellists, during a string clinic. Studying with Mimi Rabson. Making friends from all over the world."

And most important, she adds, "Proving my high school teacher wrong."

Susan Gedutis Lindsay is the author of See You At the Hall: Boston's Golden Era of Irish Music and Dance (Northeastern University Press).

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