There’s the old saying about finding a “Stradivarius in the attic,” leading to an unexpected windfall.

While rooting around in the attic as a child, Alan “Rocky” Rochlin found a different musical instrument that set his life in a rich direction — an old clarinet.

“Once I started fourth grade, I began the clarinet because we had one in the attic, so that was the easiest choice,” said Rochlin. “And I really took to it.”

It helped that his parents, Alan and Heidi, are both musicians.

“I grew up always around music, so I would go to my parents’ gigs or their shows and sit in the pit with them when I was a kid,” he said. “I was quiet enough to do that.”

The 18-year-old Gov. Mifflin High School student is the Reading Eagle’s 2026 Berks’ Best winner in performing arts.

With musicians, there’s always the image of the child prodigy who can effortlessly pick up any instrument and excel at it.

That image obscures the amount of hard work that goes into the mastery of the instrument.

“I wouldn’t say I was a prodigy because I definitely practiced a lot, but I did take to it pretty well naturally,” he said.

Rochlin gravitated toward jazz and then picked up the saxophone.

“Listening to music that I liked and then figuring out how to play it was a really big thing for me,” he said. “That’s really common in jazz.”

Even though he started out playing classical music and considers himself a much better classical musician, it’s the freedom and community of jazz that draw him to it.

“I really love playing jazz because it’s more by the ear,” Rochlin said. “You hear something you like, and you figure out how to play it, and you can also share jazz with others.”

It’s almost like swapping tales, he said.

“It’s like how they used to tell legends to the next generation in mythology,” he said.

Rochlin sees his own path following two goals: an education goal and a performance goal.

He will attend Temple University, renowned for its jazz program, and major in music education, but before settling into a teaching role, he would like to expand his performance horizon by becoming a member of a military jazz band.

“It’s just a great gig,” he said. “It would be really cool.”