There\u2019s the old saying about finding a \u201cStradivarius in the attic,\u201d leading to an unexpected windfall.<\/p>\n
While rooting around in the attic as a child, Alan \u201cRocky\u201d Rochlin found a different musical instrument that set his life in a rich direction \u2014 an old clarinet.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce I started fourth grade, I began the clarinet because we had one in the attic, so that was the easiest choice,\u201d said Rochlin. \u201cAnd I really took to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
It helped that his parents, Alan and Heidi, are both musicians.<\/p>\n
\u201cI grew up always around music, so I would go to my parents\u2019 gigs or their shows and sit in the pit with them when I was a kid,\u201d he said. \u201cI was quiet enough to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 18-year-old Gov. Mifflin High School student is the Reading Eagle\u2019s 2026 Berks\u2019 Best winner in performing arts.<\/p>\n
With musicians, there\u2019s always the image of the child prodigy who can effortlessly pick up any instrument and excel at it.<\/p>\n
That image obscures the amount of hard work that goes into the mastery of the instrument.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t say I was a prodigy because I definitely practiced a lot, but I did take to it pretty well naturally,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Rochlin gravitated toward jazz and then picked up the saxophone.<\/p>\n
\u201cListening to music that I liked and then figuring out how to play it was a really big thing for me,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s really common in jazz.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even though he started out playing classical music and considers himself a much better classical musician, it\u2019s the freedom and community of jazz that draw him to it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really love playing jazz because it\u2019s more by the ear,\u201d Rochlin said. \u201cYou hear something you like, and you figure out how to play it, and you can also share jazz with others.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s almost like swapping tales, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like how they used to tell legends to the next generation in mythology,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Rochlin sees his own path following two goals: an education goal and a performance goal.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just a great gig,\u201d he said. \u201cIt would be really cool.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s the old saying about finding a \u201cStradivarius in the attic,\u201d leading to an unexpected windfall. While rooting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193279,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,85079,227,182,139,28,128,130,129,706],"class_list":["post-193278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks-county","tag-berks-best-2026","tag-education","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-top-stories-reg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}