Interview by Linda Leiva

In her own words, “It was the chance of a lifetime, a dream come true.”

Casandra Engstrom, 23, of Lewiston, returned recently from a Master Class with renownedtrumpet player Wynton Marsalis at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia. 

She was invited to attend the class by Rodney Mack, a cousin of Marsalis’, whom she met at a trumpet retreat.

Marsalis is a Pulitzer Prize winning musician, a music educator and an advocate of American culture. He is also a composer of renown and has more than 70 records that have sold over 7 million copies, three of them with Gold Record status.

“As a jazz trumpeter . . . he taught me that being a musician is who you are,” Engstrom said. He taught about American culture and that his musical lineage was in his family genetics.

As for Engstrom, her interest in music began when she was in kindergarten and a cousin was deciding whether to play the drums or the trumpet.

“My cousin played on a drum pad, just a circle that I thought was silly,” she said. But as a fourth-grader at Lamoine Consolidated School, she decided upon the trumpet.

“(Playing the trumpet) has helped me learn about myself; it has opened my mind to new things that I was not exposed to (such as) classical music at a young age,” Engstrom said. “It has also challenged me to overcome obstacles in learning, my challenges in learning. It’s given me confidence.” 

She studied classical music at the University of Southern Maine. Playing classical music, she said, is “expressive in a different way than jazz or other genres.” 

Engstrom’s favorite venues are old buildings.

“Old churches…they are great because the acoustics are great…old stone buildings and the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts in Hartford, Conn.,” she said. “That was the biggest venue where I performed. I felt it was eye-opening.”

The Merrill Auditorium in Portland is great fun,” she said, and “the acoustics are different.”

At the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia for her Master Class she performed a French classical piece.

“Wynston Marsalis told me, ‘Don’t just study French music, study the art and culture, then you will be a well-rounded musician.’ It is who you are,” she said.