Reluctant to share about his achievement, violinist sophomore Dylan Zhong was selected as a Texas All-State Musician in February; the highest honor an individual high school student musician can receive.
“I just try my best to practice, the entire evening if I can,” Dylan said. “From when I get home to 10 p.m. I try to think about practicing. I don’t always practice, but I will at least be thinking about practicing the entire time.”
Dylan participated in the UIL Orchestra competitions April 9. He was a member of Symphony A, the highest Chaparral orchestra. His orchestra received all 1s, the highest score possible.
The amount of work he puts into orchestra is immense, but he doesn’t see it quite as such. Still, that’s not to say his passion for violin isn’t evident.
“It’s [for the] love of the game,” Dylan said. “When you play in orchestra or in chamber groups, it’s very enjoyable. I would practice, if only to get that sense of having fun and being able to do collaboration.”
He juggles orchestra and school with a passion for writing. Writing was always an interest for him, but it was his sister who encouraged him to submit his work to competitions in middle school. While he doesn’t submit his writing to contests anymore, he continues to write poems for the Final Draft.
“I just submitted [to the Final Draft] because I thought it would be fun,” Dylan said. “One of them I wrote just for submitting because one of my friends [needed submissions]. I spent an evening and wrote that, and then I revised it over two months until mid-January.”
Although he still puts his writing out there, he mostly does it as a hobby now. If he doesn’t keep his writing for himself, it’s on his personal website, where he shares poetry and a variety of blog posts where he comments on just about anything he’s into at the moment.
“Writing [was something] I was always kind of forced into before I started it,” Dylan said. “But I’ve always enjoyed writing on my website. I do music reviews, I do manga reviews… I do book reviews.”
Specifically, Dylan enjoys manhua, Chinese comics. He reads them, reviews them on his website, and translates them into English online. These are all big hobbies for Dylan, but they are often on and off as he balances it with schoolwork, and of course his violin duties.
“There’s gonna be long periods where I don’t write because of school, and there’s gonna be long periods where I write hundreds of lines a day,” Dylan said.
Altogether, if there’s one thing to know about Dylan Zhong: he’s a multitalented multitasker. Nothing will fully keep him from practicing his plethora of hobbies and skills, and discovering more things he loves.
