A Professor's Love for Music Makes Life Fully Lived

“Music is so much a part of my life, it feels like eating or sleeping,” Professor Bergstrom has said about music enriching her life. Music was able to reach her when she was very young and has continued to enhance her life well into adulthood. Bergstrom has been teaching at Anoka Ramsey Community College for eight years, making classical music relevant for students to discover and appreciate.

When asked what the first musical moment which first affected her life, Bergstrom had a very unique memory. “My mother used to have my sister and I ‘sing’ conversations instead of speak them. It was playful, memorable, creative, and it made me think of music as being something improvisatory, free, and very powerful in communicating,” she said.

Her mother was able to inspire her musically while working with church music. The two of them have very similar personalities and are able to share ideas, resources, and help each other out in various jobs. Bergstrom even performs at her church whenever she goes home to visit her family.

She decided that singing was her passion in high school and also focused on instruments such as the piano and the flute. She began playing piano as soon as she could maneuver her walker over to the piano. From there she began piano lessons in first grade, but quit as soon as she could due to a major disliking of the actual lessons. She started studying voice once she was in high school and was able to understand where she wanted to go in her life. “I chose singing over piano or flute because of the connection it has with text, emotion, and communication,” she said about deciding to become a voice major in college.

Bergstrom attended Augsburg College in Minneapolis, going for a Bachelors Degree in Music, with a Voice Major. Also she had a minor in Organ and Flute performance. She went onto the University of Minnesota Twin Cities to accomplish her Masters Degree in Music and Choral conducting.

It was not until she graduated from Augsburg that she decided to pursue a job in the teaching field. “As I came to absolutely love directing church choir rehearsals and not just teaching them the notes and rhythms of the piece, but actually talking about the composer and why that person wrote this type of music or what was happening in the world when the piece was written,” Bergstrom said. “I got so much energy and joy and fulfillment out of that role, I decided to pursue conducting and teaching, rather than performing as the primary focus of my career.”

Bergstrom has been selected as an “Emerging Conductor,” and was honored to conduct the Minnesota Chorale, which is the choir that sings with the Minnesota Orchestra. One of her composition has also won the Cincinnati Children’s Choir Composition, which was performed last March. She has been composing since college after taking lessons there and in graduate school. Bergstrom mostly likes to compose for competitions not to win them, although she says it is an added bonus, but they serve her well as a deadline so she will have more discipline to work hard on them.

Bergstrom says the best part of her job is taking witness to music in the life of her students. “Watching or reading about a student’s reaction to the first time hearing Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings or seeing and hearing the thrill of a choir performing Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus with a professional orchestra, nothing is better than that!”