PBS Wisconsin Music & Arts

My name is Clark Snavely.

I am 16 years old.

I am a homeschooler from New Berlin, Wisconsin, and I've been playing violin for 11 years now.

Both my parents are musicians.

My dad was a middle school band director for a long time and my mom is a flute player.

My brother also plays violin.

We started at the same time, so he started even younger.

I've been in MYSO-- this is my sixth year.

MYSO somehow kept going through COVID, so that was a wonderful refuge for all of us to get to see other people in real life.

Zak and I met in Orchestra.

My conductor put us as stand partners.

He and I are both 16 and our brothers are both 14, so it's meant to be that we're great friends.

We haven't really talked about competing against each other.

We both know it's coming but we've both won already, getting to play in the Final Forte.

I would say the biggest influence on me as a musician would definitely be Pamela and Carter Simmons.

Carter is my orchestra director and Pamela is my teacher.

– Pamela: Would you want to change your sound on the F and the D?

- She's made a huge difference to my sound.

She's taught me to relax my body when I play and keeping my hand loose.

If it weren't for them, I would definitely not be where I am today.

I enjoy spending time with my family.

We play a lot of ping pong together, which is a ton of fun.

We also play foosball.

Henry's gotten really good at foosball.

He's a tough opponent.

When I was 14 years old, I heard the Sibelius for the first time and I fell in love with it right away.

May or may not have had a couple tears.

[laughs] I asked my teacher to play it, and she's like, "No, you're not good enough."

I kept bugging her.

I would probably mention it once a month until she finally said, "Okay, you can play this now."

It's got a wonderful melody.

And there's a little duet you play with the principal viola, which is going to be really special.

I play violin for the joy of playing it.

I would call it an escape, except that, really, everything else is an escape because I spend almost all my time on violin.

Of course, it is challenging, but the challenge is definitely welcome.