HONORABLE MENTION Nazdar Rosna Ayzit ’23
Nazdar Rosna Ayzit is a first-year student, hailing from Istanbul, Turkey. She is considering a concentration in Economics and Certificates in Creative Writing and Entrepreneurship. Having played the piano for eight years and attended classical music concerts and operas in Istanbul, she now describes herself as “an occasional performer, singing in the dorm showers.” Missing the artistic pursuits in her life which have been overtaken by the demands of her academics, Nazdar entered the Creative Reactions Contest as a way to make time for music and art and to reconnect with what she has “always loved the most: to get inspired and to create.”
Music, arts, and stories are all faces of the same complex, beautiful story of a life. The all-Beethoven program that Nazdar attended for the contest, performed by violinist Isabelle Faust, cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras, and pianist Alexander Melnikov, was the first concert that she attended on campus. For her, “music, arts, and stories are all faces of the same complex, beautiful story of a life,” a concept that she translated into a pencil drawing narrating an imaginary story that she found within the music. “My emotions during the concert were floating freely with the music in the air of Richardson, enwrapping and tickling each soul there until they landed on their vessel, the lady next to me. She was there alone, just like me... just after the piano began to set the scene and the cello began to flirt with the violin in all its playful nature, the perfect lady leaned her cheek to her palm and sighed. Never have I seen such a scene of palpable memory, offering the tiniest glimpse for a bystander like me to a life richer than her pearls, deeper than the auditorium. For the duration of the concert, she stayed in that pose, lost in lived moments of music.”
12 • CRC 19/20