Elaine Paulin
Scholarship Winner
October 2025

Elaine Paulin, age 19

2025 graduate of Del Sol Academy of the Performing Arts

Audrey Bush Scholarship winner 2025

First-year student at UNLV

 

If I were to meet one of your best friends and ask him or her to tell me about you, what
might I learn? 
First off, they’d say that I’m a caring and energetic person. The friends I’m really close to tell me
I’m fun and pretty easygoing. 

 

It’s a wonderful thing to have close friends from a young age, connections that can last a last a lifetime.
I value my friendships a lot. I think I’m at a point where I have two or three friends that I know I
can stick with for a very long time. They mean the world to me. 

What kinds of activities do you enjoy?
Besides music, I do a lot of crafty stuff. I don’t do it much anymore, but I used to like to crochet.
I enjoy drawing realistic things in pencil, and I also like working in watercolors. I’m a very
hands-on person.

How did you get started with music?
I always really liked singing. If we go way back to when I was six or seven, I wanted to be a
singer. When I started middle school, that’s when I decided I wanted to try orchestra. At first it
was the cello. I wasn’t drawn to the violin because it was too high-pitched for me. I prefer a
lower range. The problem was that everybody in the class wanted to play the cello. When the
orchestra director said there were openings for bass, I said I would try it. It was pretty difficult at
first because of its size. But I developed a love for it over the years. 

Even before that, when I was around 10, I started playing the piano and took lessons for three or
four years. Learning the piano made it easier to learn bass. But the hard thing about bass was the
technical stuff related to the size of the instrument. I’ve had the same three-fourths size bass since
I started.

I’m trying to picture you in middle school with this imposing instrument.
It was very awkward at first. I always thought the bass was really cool, but it definitely was a
little uncomfortable to get around. One of the things I remembered I really liked about the bass at
the very beginning was the E-string. I thought the E-string with the lower notes was so cool. My
love for the lower register of the bass really started at that moment. 

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When did you get serious about the bass? Was there a moment or experience that cemented
your passion?
In middle school orchestra, you are a support for others. Things changed when I was in ninth
grade. I started discovering that I could play solos. That’s when I started really, really liking it.
Even as a freshman, I had some sort of drive to prove or show something to others. Something
unusual, like a melody played on a bass. I wanted to show the world the beauty of something
unusual that had begun to mean a lot to me.

Tell me about learning to express yourself through your bass playing? 
In the beginning, I was really emotion driven. I’ve always been able to work around
improvisation. And over the years, I was able to better express my emotions. As things got more
difficult, I found great satisfaction in nailing something, getting it right.

So for you, ninth grade was a turning point. 
Yes, because up to that point I had been thinking I wanted to do classical music in high school.
Period. Although I was really interested in jazz, there was one thing holding me back: I didn’t
know where or how to start. Jazz covers such a broad area. Also, I knew I would have to take
new risks, try new things even when I was uncomfortable. So I was hesitant at first, not sure it
was for me. But then I thought I might have been hiding some part of me. It was a crazy time.

How did you make that leap? 
I was very shy in middle school and didn’t put myself out there that much. Then when I got
interested and started jazz, I quickly learned that I was supposed to solo. It’s a requirement. At
first the idea kind of freaked me out. But then I started getting used to it, and went, “Wait. This is
so much better than just playing what is on the page.” I could play something creative, as if
telling a story about what I was playing. That’s what got me hooked on jazz. I saw all these
musicians—the greats of jazz. Not only that, but they did it so easily. I wanted to get to a point
where I could do that, too. Something changed about seven years ago. I’m not the same person as
I was.

What jazz musicians have inspired you? 
I like bass players in the jazz funk genre and enjoy musicians like Victor Wooten, Joe Dart, and
Mohini Dey. Also small bands that feature bass soloing sections. I watch a variety of players and
have developed my own sound over the years. 

I watched the Rotary Club video in which you played a Bottisini piece. I was moved by the
musicality with which you played. How did you do that? 
I honestly don’t know. When I was younger, I sang a lot. One of the first big bass solo composers
I looked into was Koussevitzky. I know he wrote operas as well so I got into opera. I was always

fascinated. I think opera is really nice but I prefer tenors to sopranos. Watching them, I saw
something dynamic about their performance and wanted to imitate that on the bass. So I didn’t
really learn it, but took what I knew from singing. I translate what I hear from voice into the bass
if that makes sense. It feels like I’m singing with the bass.

You’ve received some lovely recognition for your music as a soloist and as an All-State
Orchestra participant. What do you think others might see or hear in your playing? 
I want to tell a story of what’s going on in the music. Not a fully written-out story. But one told
through emotions. In doing so, I tune everybody out and just feel the music. One of my goals
when performing is to try to express myself in a really dynamic way, so a lot of people can try to
relate to what I’m feeling. Even a little bit. That’s one of the things I like about performing.
People can hear and then can interpret in their own way. When watching people perform, I
interpret what I hear as well. You can also see there’s a story they are trying to tell. Maybe that’s
what others notice in my playing. 

Tell me about Nevada All-State Orchestra.
I loved All-State! I loved getting to meet new people. And they brought in conductors from
different colleges, some professionals in their field. One of the things I noticed was they were
able to control an entire orchestra and knew how to bring out the potential in an orchestra, where
not a lot of people know each other. Everyone could play the notes of the music on our stands,
but the conductors were able to bring out the creativity in the musicians and orchestra. Every
year was different. I took away several things they taught during the ensembles. 

What motivated you to apply for the Audrey Bush Scholarship? 
I knew about FAYM and how it had helped other kids. So that piqued my interest. Also my
teacher suggested I fill out an application. I felt like I had a chance to get it and decided to apply. 

What does it mean to have received it?
It feels like a major accomplishment. The fact that music has brought me this far and given me
so many opportunities already seems crazy. When younger, I would never have imagined myself
being able to do these kinds of things. And now I am. 

In your application, you wrote about wanting to inspire passion in others. How might you
do that? 
I’ve had some recent opportunities to inspire kids, such as incoming freshmen in my school. I’ve
been able to work one-on-one with some bass players. There’s something so exciting for me in
that. They’ll come in, and even though they’re able to play, they’re not excited about music. For
example, I worked with one person, Brian. He needed to work on technique. So I worked with
him for about three weeks, twice a week. And slowly, he became more enthusiastic about what
he was doing. “Look at what I can do now!” 

It benefitted me as well. It was as if I was telling myself the same kinds of things. It’s one thing
to know something and something else to teach what you know to others, to get another person to
understand.