Music major and biology minor Rachel Hottle \u201918 considers herself to have taken \u201ca liberal arts approach to music,\u201d exploring many musical skills and concepts instead of sticking to just one. She plays both the flute and piano, and sings in the Swarthmore College Chorus, Garnet Singers, and Grapevine acapella group. She also composes music herself, including a piece based on Emily Dickinson\u2019s poem, \u201cWe Grow Accustomed to the Dark,\u201d that was performed in the Swarthmore College Chorus concert last fall.<\/p>\n
Hottle has found inspiration in female composers and songwriters. \u201cI was trained in classical flute and piano but most of the composers of classical music tend to be dead white men, \u00a0which was not the most inspiring thing for me growing up,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to look up to Mozart as a young girl. So I play primarily classical music but I draw my inspiration from Joni Mitchell, Carole King, [etc]. I really look up to female singer-songwriters.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her interest in the gender imbalance present in classical music has stayed with her throughout her time at Swarthmore, influencing her senior recital. \u201cMy initial idea was, \u2018I wanna do a recital that has only music by female composers,\u2019 but I have since discovered that that\u2019s kind of difficult since there aren\u2019t a lot of female composers,\u201d Hottle said. She instead adjusted her plans to feature \u201cmainly non- dead white men\u201d in her recital.<\/p>\n
Hottle\u2019s senior recital will be \u201ca little more eclectic than most senior recitals,\u201d according to her, including singing, flute, guitar, duets with friends, and a song from Grapevine. \u201cPlaying with other people has been an important way that I\u2019ve connected with people outside of your typical social interactions,\u201d she said. \u201cOne of my closest friends who graduated, we would just hang out all the time and sing and play the guitar and just harmonize together.\u201d<\/p>\n
She has cultivated this love of group music-making since she was 12, when her church asked her to play piano to fill a gap in their ensemble.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that was pretty central to my musical formation, being forced to do things that were a little bit beyond my ability,\u201d she said. \u201cI had to improvise on the fly and learn how to be really flexible, which I think really helped me in group music-making.\u201d<\/p>\n
After leaving the tight-knit Swarthmore community where she participated in so many ensembles, Hottle plans to study music cognition in a graduate program. She will also continue playing music as well as studying it.<\/p>\n
\u201cRegardless of what I\u2019m doing, I definitely want to keep playing after I leave Swat and I\u2019m not sure how that works in the real world\u2026are there community groups that you can join? Do you just hang up flyers saying \u2018who wants to jam with me?\u2019 I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nBayliss Wagner ’21<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Music major and biology minor Rachel Hottle \u201918 considers herself to have taken \u201ca liberal arts approach to music,\u201d exploring many musical skills and concepts instead of sticking to just one. She plays both the flute and piano, and sings in the Swarthmore College Chorus, Garnet Singers, and Grapevine acapella group. She also composes music […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":7374,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7373"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7373"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7375,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7373\/revisions\/7375"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}