Last month, Amelia Huchley ’19 was featured in a story by The Student Life, the newspaper of the Claremont Colleges, which covered her recent win in the Claremont Concert Orchestra’s Concerto Competition. She is the first vocalist in more than a decade to win.

Huchley, who graduated from the Harker Conservatory with a musical theater certificate and now attends Scripps College, told The Student Life about pursuing a career in music and the difficulty of making a living as a professional singer.

“At a lot of turns, I do get a lot of people saying to me, ‘You know how hard it is to make this work, right?’ And I do,” she said. “But on the other hand, I feel like I’m learning, and I’m making progress with my voice, and obviously some people do become professional opera singers. It’s not like it’s never going to happen. … I know it’s going to be really difficult. I do feel like I owe it to myself to try it and see if I can do it.”

She also discussed her love of singing and why she finds performing live so fulfilling.

“Even if you get up and do the exact same performance the next day, even if the performance that you did was recorded, it’s never going to happen exactly that way again, and that is really freeing.”

See the full story for more of Huchley’s thoughts on music and performance.