This article first appeared in Jersey Jazz Magazine.

For Holly Bean, in her last semester at Juilliard, it was the summit of a long journey that began when, as a three-year-old, she started playing on the piano in her Oak Ridge, TN, home. "I would hop on top of the bench and try to copy my mom, who plays piano and organ," she said. "The first thing I tried to play was 'Part of Your World' from Disney's Little Mermaid. I would hear things I liked and figure them out on the piano. I've been hearing music in my head forever."

Bean started taking piano lessons when she was four or five and "was pretty good at it, but I really got annoyed that I had to play exactly the dots on the page. My teacher didn't like that I wanted to play it the way I wanted, so my parents let me quit."

In high school, Bean had a choir teacher "who turned me off to music," so she went to Clemson University, initially on a physics scholarship, eventually changing to microbiology. She did participate in Clemson's choral program. "Clemson," Bean said, "has a fabulous choral program with a hard core choir. Most of the people in that choir aren't music majors; they're just there because they want to be."

But, in the middle of her third semester, Bean had "kind of a meltdown. My dad, who plays piano, sax, and drums, said, 'I think you should go to music school.' I said, 'I don't have any skills.' He said, 'You can sight read and you can sing.'" Bean explained that she could sight-sing, "but I had no real sight-reading abilities on the piano. I could, however, pick pieces out by ear on the piano."

She transferred to the University of Tennessee, majoring in composition at its Natalie L. Haslam College of Music. "I auditioned on voice," she said, "but I wanted to become a composer. A colleague of mine, who was a fellow composition major, introduced me to Donald Brown (a pianist and Associate Professor who taught jazz history, piano, and improvisation). I said, 'I hear you teach jazz here," and I asked him if I could become a jazz major. I didn't even have my major scales down. I was so clueless. I didn't have anything to show him. He said, 'Go home for winter break. Learn all your major scales and come back.' He also gave me a blues solo to learn.

"I studied with Donald Brown for two and a half years and also with