From marching band to baking, writing novels to Amnesty International, Evan Marshall (11) has a wide range of interests, but one of his main focuses has always been music. His current focus is the french horn.
“French horn is not my first instrument. My first instrument was piano. So I’ve been playing piano for 11 years,” Evan said.
Evan plays several instruments including piano, french horn, mellophone and guitar. He has played piano for a couple school musicals and plays french horn in marching band. He is currently trying to get better at french horn.
“It’s partially– honestly, completely– for my pride, because I have been playing, well, I’ve been playing the French horn for five years,” Evan said. “And I realized at the beginning of the year, I’m not that good at it. I’m serviceable, but I’m not great.”
Evan is also taking a musical production class that has been a big learning experience and a lot of fun.
“So I had that [musical production] class and then I had a study hall next period. And so then I stayed in the class for that period afterwards. So I was already doing two periods of music for music production, and then they have a studio down there called darkroom studio, and he’d have it open for two hours after school. So I’d stay for two hours after school. So I was doing like five hours straight. I mean, the results don’t show it, but I learned a lot.” Evan said.
Evan’s best friend since childhood, Bailey Moore (11), holds him in high regard for his commitment to music.
“He’s able to play an instrument that takes a ton of time, and then he also does marching band and also keeps getting grades and does all this extracurricular stuff on top of everything else. So I really respect that,” Bailey said.
Longtime boyfriend Miles Pratte (11) really respects Evan for his persistence even when he wasn’t dealt the best hand of cards.
“That’s [the] thing about his persistence: during marching bands, he would come every day he could just to, you know, just to continue improving,” Miles said.
Miles gets to enjoy Evan’s company as well as his excellent baking. Evan bakes everything from cheesecake to eclairs.
“He loves to bake. He’s been doing it for, oh man, god knows how long. The first time we ever met, he baked something for me actually, which was kind of surprising,” Miles said.
Looking at classes for next year, Evan wants to take a couple of art classes, more music, advanced seminar and baking and pastry. He wants to write a novel and plans to use advanced seminar to work on it.
“So I’m trying to work with Ms. Lehman to hopefully get a rough draft of a novel completed, which I think would definitely help. [I] think that would give me a lot of experience,” Evan said. “But I don’t think number one, I don’t think I’m ever going to actually write it if I don’t give myself a class to incentivize it. I also don’t think that anyone’s going to take it seriously unless I give myself a quest [to] incentivize it.”
Evan’s twin brother, Jacob Marshall (11), talked about the challenges he faces with having a well known sibling because people often mistake Jacob for Evan.
“[T]his guy kept on staring at me in the bathroom randomly, and then I think he started getting mad at me, and I was super confused,” Jacob said. “[It was] because he knew Evan, and he [had been] wondering why Evan was suddenly ghosting him.”
Because Evan is involved in so many activities,, people often come up to Jacob and say they know him from somewhere.
“He does poetry club, that’s where I know him from. And for me, it’s more of like, oh, he’s doing poetry club. I’m not gonna know him for a month,” Jacob said.
Despite not being able to have as much time with his brother as he wants, Jacob is still incredibly proud of Evan.
Evan is excited to continue his creative and musical journey in the coming years even if he dosn’t use it in his future career.
“I’m really just trying to learn how to create. I mean, I already know all, like the technical like musical theory, things behind songs. I just have to get better at practicing it and doing it,” Evan said.
