BY MARY ANNE ROSS
Correspondent
Lillian Young performs on the harp during the 30th Glenn Miller Scholarship Competition in Clarinda, Iowa, where she was the youngest finalist and the only instrumental winner who was not a college music major. Lillian Young has been playing heavenly music for the past nine years.
The recent East Brunswick High School graduate is an award-winning harpist who is frequently invited to perform at banquets, weddings, communions and Easter and Christmas services.
Lillian usually plays classical pieces composed by artists such as Handel, Beethoven and Debussy, but she recently won a $2,000 scholarship for playing a very different kind of music. In June, Lillian placed second in the 30th annual Glenn Miller Scholarship Competition in Clarinda, Iowa, the birthplace of late band leader Glenn Miller.
She won with her rendition of Miller’s big band classic “In the Mood.” The competition draws an international crowd, and Lillian was both the youngest finalist and the only instrumental winner who was not a college music major.
Since her harp stands 6 feet high and weighs about 80 pounds, just getting the instrument to Iowa posed a challenge. It can be taken on the plane, but it can’t go in cargo because it can easily be damaged.
“You actually have to buy a seat for it,” Lillian noted.
So while Young flew, her parents, Peter and Anli, drove the harp out to Iowa in the back of the family minivan over three days.
“It was really a very interesting experience,” Peter said of the drive. “We were able to see a part of the country we probably would not have visited. It was very different from here. There were miles and miles of cornfields.”
Peter is modest about his own role in his daughter’s musical endeavors.
“I’m just the porter,” he said with a laugh.
Instead, he credits Anli in bringing out Lillian’s talents. Anli is a piano teacher and all three of their children grew up in a home filled with music. Lillian’s older brother and sister, Richard and Grace, play both the piano and cello. Lillian plays the oboe and is an accomplished pianist.
Lillian, who is now 17, began studying the piano at 2 years old. At 3, she was in her first competition at Weill Recital Hall in Carnegie Hall. She was so small, in fact, that they had to lift her onto the bench so she could perform.
“She dropped the plaque they gave her because it was too heavy for her,” Anli recalled.
That prize was just the first in a long series of awards and accolades Lillian has received throughout her burgeoning musical career.
Lillian already holds some unique records – she is the only person who has ever won Honors/High Honors at the New Jersey Music Teachers Association auditions 15 years in a row. She has earned the gold medal at the Shore Music Educator Association Evaluation Program for 14 years. Lillian has also won the prestigious Cecilia Music Club Award Competition for 14 years and their Young Artists Competition for eight.
She’s been a piano teacher herself for the past few years.
But she found herself drawn to the harp because it is such a beautiful instrument.
“The harp isn’t used in a lot of popular music, but it’s in a lot of movies,” she noted. It is one of the oldest instruments known to mankind and almost every culture has produced some version of it.
Young, who plays the pedal harp, has studied harp under Marjorie Mollenauer since 1997.
She made her New Jersey debut performing with the Manalapan Battleground Symphony in 2002.
Among the locations she’s performed in are the Merkin Concert Hall, Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center, and at Monmouth and Rider universities. But East Brunswick residents may remember her best from performances on TV Channel 3.
Music is not Lillian’s only passion. She enjoys sports and rock climbing, and is looking forward to going skydiving with her sister, though she has to wait until she is 18.
Despite her past, Lillian will not major in music when she attends New York University this fall.
“Music will always be a part of my life, and like my mother says, the discipline and things I’ve learned from studying music will help me in other areas of my life,” she noted.
But Lillian will be attending NYU’s Stern School of Business, where she was accepted in the scholars program. She received the Bloustein and other scholarships. She intends to major in marketing and finance, with a minor in law.
“I get my interest in business from my father. I think I’d like to be a management consultant,” Lillian said.