Young Musicians Scholarship: An Insight Into our 2024 Winners

We have been awarding the Young Musicians Scholarship since 2010, and since then have granted over $19,000 to 18 young musicians. This award is given to two NJ high school seniors every year who plan to enter college with a concentration in music. In our selection process, we look for candidates who are strong, confident, and talented individuals who are certain to make an impact in the world through their craft. Today, we are thrilled to announce Cecilia Soheily and Andrew Joyal as our 2024 Young Musicians Scholarship winners! This scholarship will aid these promising young artists as they set off to realize their future musical aspirations at the university of their choice. Now, let’s get to know them!

Soprano Cecilia Soheily, a senior at Hawthorne Christian Academy, comes from North Haledon, New Jersey. At the age of 8, she started studying voice performance, and at 12, piano. She says that her early encounters with music were what fostered her passion for the art, and credits her “collection of musical theater DVDs: everything from The Sound of Music to West Side Story” for bringing about her love for music. 

All throughout high school, Cecilia excelled in solo and ensemble competitions, performing as a soprano in select and All-State choirs. Her dedication to music and performing comes from her mantra that “there’s no better gift than having others appreciate what I love.” 

Cecilia was a member of Julliard’s Pre-College under the direction of Ms. Lorraine Nubar for several years, a transformative period for her where she was able to grow as an artist. She was a participant in the Juilliard Summer Voice Intensive program in 2023 and later that fall, Cecilia won first place and scholarship money at the Montclair State University Schmidt Vocal Competition. 

Cecilia has taken master classes with various instructors, including Veronica Miller, Rachel Calloway, Latonia Moore, and Marcus Jefferson. Other highlights of her musical career were performing at Wells Cathedral while visiting Scotland and England with her high school choir and singing at Carnegie Hall with modern hymn authors Keith & Kristyn Getty. 

This upcoming fall, Cecilia will be studying vocal performance at the Manhattan School of Music under Ms. Joan Patenaude-Yarnell. She intends to pursue graduate education in vocal performance to work towards a career as an opera singer after earning her BM in music.

Our second scholarship winner, Trombonist Andrew Joyal, hails from Denville, New Jersey. His musical studies began in the first grade when his parents enrolled him as a chorister in his church's choir despite all his initial objections. He says that “this confusion was short-lived,” though, because he soon found his community within the music realm. 

The story of how he became a trombonist, though, is not quite what you’d expect: when it came time for him to select an instrument for the fourth-grade band, he went with the trombone as he saw his friends playing it and thought the slide was funny. He has since been able to participate in the Juilliard Preparatory Division, the New Jersey Youth Symphony, and the New York Youth Symphony. Andrew feels as though his time with the New Jersey Youth Symphony was his most transformative because it truly “pushed [him] out of [his] comfort zone through the opportunity to play a wide range of repertoire in a variety of different settings.” He evolved not only as a musician, but also as a person, and this period was what ultimately convinced him to pursue a music career.

As a member of the Juilliard Pre College Orchestra, he recently shared the stage with the New York Philharmonic, performing the David Trombone Concerto with the Hanover Wind Symphony as the recipient of their Summer Music Scholarship. That summer, he also spent time touring Italy and France with the New Jersey Youth Symphony. Andrew has had the honor and privilege of learning from many renowned instructors, including Burt Mason, Vernon Post, Weston Sprott, Nicholas Schwartz, and Demian Austin. Though all different, he says that all of these experiences are connected by “the strong, supportive communities that drive them.”

He will be touring Greece this summer with the New York Youth Symphony before beginning his studies in the fall in Peter Ellefson's studio at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music. Andrew says, though, that his main goal while entering the music industry is “to help make the joys of music-making more accessible to all.”

We wish these two young musicians all the best as they pursue further education and keep their passion for music alive. They are both very valued members of their communities and will certainly change the landscape of the music world as we know it for the better!