Elkridge Musician-Scholar Sees World Through Clarinet

Ever since Carrie Lynn Barbagallo picked up the clarinet at age 9, music has taken her places.

“The clarinet, and music, helped me get through hard times in my life, always inspiring me,” said Barbagallo, who grew up in Elkridge and is now a junior at James Madison University (JMU) in Virginia. “Music soothes my soul, and playing my clarinet is therapeutic to me.”

This fall, she’ll be playing the Mellophone—a marching French horn—with the Marching Royal Dukes, a group of 450 musicians that is the official marching band for JMU.

Barbagallo played with the Marching Royal Dukes in the London New Year’s Day Parade to ring in 2011. Known for its high-energy performances, the marching band was the first act of the parade, and it didn’t disappoint the half-million spectators and two million TV viewers, she said.

“To sum it up: IT WAS AMAZING!” said Barbagallo. “It was such a phenomenal experience, almost unreal.”

Over the summer, Barbagallo—a psych major—returned to Europe to study cross-cultural psychology in Italy.

When she's not studying or playing clarinet in the Marching Royal Dukes, which she does during the fall semester, Barbagallo sits first chair in the concert band—her spring semester band—and plays saxophone in the Pep Band to cheer on the basketball team.

Barbagallo said she started her musical career with the clarinet, at age 9, for two reasons: Her sister had already chosen the flute; and since she wanted to transport a small instrument back and forth to school, her only other option was the clarinet.

“Every note I played, even though it was horribly out of tune, brought me pure joy,” Barbagallo said. She practiced for hours each day and when her friends came over, she begged them all to bring their instruments so they could practice together.

When she first went to , band director Adam Hunter put her in the seventh and eighth grade bands in fifth chair; by seventh grade, she sat first chair. At Long Reach High School, she auditioned for the Wind Ensemble Band and aced it, and that's when she joined the marching band, a passion that she has continued to practice for more than six years and still does with the Royal Marching Dukes.

In addition to making music at JMU, Barbagallo is promoting it, as a member of Kappa Kappa Psi, the Honorary Band Service Fraternity, which supports the university’s music department.

Barbagallo said she thinks it’s important to give back as much as possible. By volunteering for the Campus Assault Response Emergency hotline (C.A.R.E.), she’s able to do just that and put her psychology training into practice with victims of sexual assault. She's also a Resident Advisor on campus.

As she breathes her dreams into reality through her instruments, one thing is for certain: she’s just getting started.