Dreaming of opera, student travels from China to Westminster

In the fall of 2013, Lydia Ma ’16 took stock of her life as a second-year graduate student and realized her voice performance program was the wrong fit. Only 22, she was a student in Shanghai, China, who had already received a bachelor’s degree in musicology. “Something was telling me that the knowledge I learned in China was not enough to fulfill my intellectual curiosity completely,” she says. “The education system is so different in China, and because I was in a developing program, we didn’t have a lot of resources. I had questions and needed answers.” Ma, who grew up in a small town in China and held fast to a dream of becoming an opera singer, began to research education alternatives across the globe. She found Westminster Choir College while searching for the top 30 music schools in the world, though her inquiry was stifled by the Chinese government’s blocking of websites like Facebook and YouTube. “It was difficult to find what I was looking for,” she says. Once she was accepted to Westminster, Ma made the difficult decision to leave home. In doing so, she defied the wishes of her parents and her teachers, both of whom wanted her to stay and become a teacher through the Chinese system of higher education. Like parents everywhere, Ma’s mother and father wanted their daughter to work toward secure employment, even if it came at the expense of her dream. Ma’s voice teachers sought to keep her in a program that taught the same techniques with which Ma had begun her studies. “Otherwise,” Ma says, “you have to start over, which is what I did.” When she began studying a Westminster, she faced other challenges in addition to adapting to a new voice technique. She had to learn a new language and culture — “a totally different way to deal with things,” she says. Financial pressures mounted; she had given up a stable part-time teaching job and occasional paying performances in China. And the cultural differences exacerbated an already heavy workload. “I’m a very hard worker, but I have to translate every word I don’t know,” Ma says. “Sometimes, there’s not enough time.” To help her balance work, study and recreation, Ma receives aid as a recipient of the Betty Ling Tsang MM ’43 Scholarship. Designed to help students from China and Taiwan who demonstrate musical excellence and exceptional promise, the scholarship is funded by Tsang’s bequest, which she was motivated to make as a thank you to the Choir College for giving her the opportunity to study when many schools would not accept Chinese students. Tsang earned a master’s degree in music from Westminster in 1943 after immigrating to the U.S. to escape the Japanese invasion of China. She went on to work as a piano accompanist in New York City. “I put so much pressure on myself to always study,” Ma says. “I never have time to even go out for coffee. Receiving the scholarship is a release.” Now in her mid-20s and second year of graduate school, Ma has settled into life at Westminster, especially under the guidance of voice professor Sharon Sweet. In the summer of 2015, she interned with the Princeton Festival, a multi-week cultural festival that features many genres of music including jazz, classical, pop and fully staged opera. “It was a great opportunity,” Ma says. “I got to know the American perspective of how things work and how things are done. I was able to sit in on rehearsals and watch how the singers would act and sing and interact with the director.” Set to graduate in December 2016 with a Master of Music in Voice Performance & Pedagogy with an emphasis in performance and a minor in pedagogy, Ma has not definitely made up her mind if she’ll try to stay in the U.S. or return to China. Either way, she has found what she set out to discover at the beginning of her journey. “School here is so different and the program was very intensive,” Ma says. “There is still so much that I want to learn. The most treasured things I have here are the books in the library. They have all the answers.”