Violinist

Nicole Waboose was little more than a toddler when she experienced love at first sight.

Nicole Waboose at Hilll Crest Park in Thunder Bay.

“The Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra had done their performance and they had a ‘petting zoo’ where you were able to hold, touch, and pluck the instruments they were playing,” said Nicole’s father Murray Waboose recalling an event he had attended at Old Fort William Historical Park with his family. “It was at that point that (Nicole who was two and half at the time) made up her mind that she would play the violin. And from there she kept on asking us.”

It didn’t take long for her parents to realize this wasn’t just a passing fancy.

For a year and a half Nicole kept approaching her parents with the same request: “Can you set me up with a violin and some lessons?”

Nicole’s parents figured she was too young to handle lessons and regular practices, so they kept putting her off.

It got to the point where her parents couldn’t just keep saying no, so they contacted Olga Medvedeva, a violin teacher in Thunder Bay, to give her professional opinion to Nicole.

“Her mom called me and said her daughter is interested in playing violin and I thought four is a little too young because it requires a good deal of mental and physical aptitude and all that,” Medvedeva said. “The mom said ‘yes, that’s what we’ve been telling her, but it’s futile.

She doesn’t want to listen. She wants to play violin’.”

To humor little Nicole, Olga agreed to test their daughter to see if she was ready.

“Olga did manage to pull out this tiny violin along with two elastic bands and a sponge to ensure she could hold the violin correctly while she performed the tests as instructed,” Murray said.

Medvedeva checked her hand and body positioning and performed a series of tests to see if she could hold attention and to see if she was ‘musical.’

“She proved to be a very focused individual who was very steady and who paid lots of attention,” Olga said, adding she was unable to take Nicole on as a student because of lack of space following the testing process. “I went home and I thought about how she held the violin and the look on her face when she held it and I knew I had to come up with a slot for this girl, and this is how I opened my Saturdays to students.”

Finally, Nicole’s dream had come true: her parents got her a violin of her own.

“When they first brought it home, I played it and I thought it would play itself,” she said. “I thought I would be awesome right off the bat. I remember saying to my parents ‘this is the worstest sounding violin that I have ever heard’.”

Her parents were kind and responded to her saying it was normal and that she would need to log many hours of practice before her violin would turn out great music.

“I practice anywhere from half an hour to an hour every day in my bedroom at home,” Nicole said, adding she doesn’t have favourite music. She studies classical music with Medvedeva under an internationally recognized music curriculum and is tested annually through the Royal Conservatory of Music.

“Nicole just completed her Grade 3 exam, but she’s very capable as a musician because she has excellent focus so I give her music you would normally be given in higher grades to study: she was able to learn a piece that was four levels higher than she is currently studying.”

Nicole’s love of the violin has translated into many first place finishes. In fact, since she began competing, Nicole has only gotten one second place finish.

“My violin teacher was already giving me concertos when I was around 5, 6 or 7 and people were coming to me to say what an amazing violinist I am,” Nicole said. “That’s when I knew that this is what I was meant to do.”

She also said it’s easy to tell when you are doing what you were meant to do.

“You just know,” she said. “It just feels natural for you. It feels like it’s right and you feel special and you feel happy.”

She also says “You don’t necessarily have to be good at it, just if you feel happy and complete even when you tried your best, then you know it’s for you.”