Percussion student Will Morgan has landed a seat in the New World Symphony (NWS) in Miami, Florida, a prestigious orchestral academy cited as a top on-ramp for early-career musicians.

Morgan, who studies with Percussion Department Chair Jacob Nissly at SFCM, started playing drum kit initially before switching to concert percussion. He remembers it was a trial lesson with Nissly—along with an immediately good impression of San Francisco and SFCM's Bowes Center facilities—that helped make the final decision for him.

Will Morgan. (Credit: Chloe Hill)

"Jake was exactly who I needed after undergrad," Morgan says. "I was coming from a school that doesn't really have someone actively in an orchestra to learning from an active orchestra principal, and that was like, night and day. Jake helped me so much with what people actually care about on an audition panel."

Morgan came to SFCM needing a bit of a mindset shift. "I think I ran into a wall when I was doing grad school auditions and I was in sort of a bad headspace there," he recalls. "I would put so much pressure on myself to perform. It was like, 'I need to get into these schools so I can do this with my career.' But it really shifted when I got here. I was like, 'Well, I kind of hated that. I don't want to do that anymore.' You shouldn't need to beat yourself up to be able to move forward."

His advice? Become a morning person—and maybe look into buying a bike. "I decided I had to strike a balance between things," Morgan says. "I used to practice in the afternoon, so I started getting up early to get my practice and whatever else I needed to do for school out of the way. I love cycling, so then I'd go on a bike ride and see the nature in the city. That was almost like meditation, that would let me work through my thoughts alone in a productive way." (Morgan cites Steve Reich's 6 Marimbas as a favorite to bike or jog to.)

"A lot of those thoughts were trying to take the pressure off of myself, just being like, 'I'm in school and I'm here to learn. So if I mess up, that's fine,'" he says. "That was a continual thing, but also balancing that with, 'Well, why can't it be me to advance in this audition? Of course it can, I'm putting in the work.'"

With a reconfigured headspace, Morgan took auditions for the San Diego Symphony, the San Francisco Ballet, and lastly, NWS while in California. He prepped for the 10:00 a.m. audition in Miami by waking up at 5 or 5:30 a.m. in California and practicing as quietly as he could in his apartment before heading to SFCM to run the mock audition. The day of his NWS audition, he remembers, "I was walking over there and listening to Michael Jackson. I felt really solid in the warmup room, and I thought that was one of the best playing days I've ever had."

Learn more about studying percussion at SFCM.