Mae Cooke: Odysée of Performance

Dual degree student and graduating senior Mae Cooke ’23E, ’23 finds an innovative path to integrating their studies of harp and studio arts.

Cooke began playing the harp at age five and dreamed early on of attending the Eastman School of Music. Like most Eastman students, they have devoted several hours a day to practice and spent months on a single piece. But as part of the University of Rochester, Eastman enables students to branch out into other areas of study as well. Cooke found that they needed the visual arts in their life, too. Studio arts were something they had begun to take up seriously in high school. One class in Rochester’s studio arts program led to several more, and eventually, another major.

“I definitely feel like I have pushed myself artistically,” says Cooke.

Cooke is the recipient of support from three Eastman School scholarship funds: the Eileen Malone ’28E Scholarship Fund, named for the legendary figure in the harp world who taught at Eastman from 1930 to 1989; the Emily Lowenfels Oppenheimer ’43E Harp Scholarship Fund; and the Doris Johnson Hults Dean’s Performance Scholarship Fund, offered to students with the most extraordinary abilities in musical performance, as demonstrated in the admissions audition.

If you could walk into the mind of a musician performing on stage, what would the scene look like?

It depends, of course, on the musician. And on the piece.

But suppose that the musician is Mae Cooke ’23E, ’23, who this spring will earn two degrees from the University of Rochester: a bachelor of music in harp, which they have studied at the Eastman School of Music, and a bachelor of arts in studio arts, which they have studied in the School of Arts & Sciences. Imagine, too, that the piece they are performing is Odyssée for solo harp, by Caroline Lizotte.

Cooke performed Odyssée in the spring of 2022 for their performance jury, a milestone required by most Eastman majors in which students perform annually before a faculty panel. Reflecting on that experience, Cooke posed a question: What if, as they were performing the piece, “people could see what is going on in my brain? What if I could make that into a physical thing?”

Cooke brought the idea to fruition as their senior thesis project in studio arts.

Read more: https://www.rochester.edu/newscenter/mae-cooke-audiovisual-journey-into-performers-mind-558092/

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