Tuesday afternoon, the Bengal Beat sat down with Lucy Beckham’s Orchestra director, Melissa Martin, to get an understanding of how she thinks. Ms. Martin’s roles at Beckham are Orchestra Director, guitar teacher, and department head. She states that she feels like a mom most days though. Ms. Martin has been directing orchestra for 30 years now and hopes to be playing in an orchestra herself in 10 years. If she’s not doing that though, she hopes to be sitting on a beach somewhere enjoying herself. She works closely with all the teachers there but mostly the performing arts teacher including dance and theater. Ms. Martin first became interested in Orchestra in 7th, but she was interested in both medicine and music. She states that the hardest part of her day is balancing all her responsibilities which also include those at home. She has a cat named Simba at home, a brother, lots of nieces and nephews, and her mom who she states is her closest friend. Ms. Martin states that if she could change anything, she would want to change being able to function on four hours of sleep. We then wrapped Ms. Martin’s interview up with a few of her thoughts, stating how she watched Orchestra change people’s lives and believes that if every kid were in a music class they would learn how to work as a team, build confidence and all know the skills to work towards a common goal. Overall she just wishes that all humans could be nice to each other.
