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Sage aspires to be a music educator on the Navajo Reservation. She believes her education at NAU will make her a stronger performer and a better educator.<\/em><\/p>\n Sage Bond is a performer. She has been singing and playing guitar professionally for ten years on stages across the country, from Arizona to New York. But she has never sung opera. That is, not until she started her degree at Northern Arizona University.<\/p>\n Sage transferred from Din\u00e9 College and is now working towards her bachelor\u2019s degree in\u00a0music<\/a>\u00a0with an emphasis in voice and a minor in\u00a0psychology<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d never had a music class before starting with the School of Music. I had to teach myself before the audition how to sing opera,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel like I barely made it through.\u201d<\/p>\n Professor\u00a0Todd Sullivan<\/a>, director of the School of Music, encouraged Sage to attend NAU after hearing her sing at NAU\u2019s\u00a0Prochnow Auditorium<\/a>\u00a0and viewing her YouTube videos. Sage, who is Navajo and Apache, performs independently and with a heavy-metal band called Lozen, named after an Apache warrior woman. She calls her voice a \u201cCookie Monster\u201d scream. \u201cMy teacher is finding ways to utilize my energy from that metal vocal style and putting it into opera,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re both just learning about all these new things about me.\u201d<\/p>\n Being new to NAU and new to performance education, she has appreciated encouragement from her music school peers. \u201cOpera is really hard,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s so much technique that I am still learning, but yeah, it\u2019s great being alongside my peers. They\u2019re so encouraging.\u201d<\/p>\n She also feels fortunate that she has been able to share her music and heritage with her classmates. \u201cStarting my semester with my world music class and being able to collaborate on topics that involved Native American people, I helped the class with their education,\u201d she said, \u201cnot by reading a book and being interpreted by someone non-native, I was there to help them understand.\u201d<\/p>\n For Sage, coming to NAU meant not only a culture shift but also a two-hour commute from her home near Monument Valley. Her mentor and advisor,\u00a0Deborah Raymond<\/a>, School of Music Associate Professor, who is retiring, provided guidance and a place to stay so Sage wouldn\u2019t have to commute the long distances. \u201cShe\u2019s been so patient with me,\u201d Sage said. \u201cShe\u2019s the one who decided to take me under her wing and teach me everything that I would need to know about opera and to get me ready to take on next semester with the new voice instructor.\u201d<\/p>\n Sage also found other support resources during her first semester at NAU. The\u00a0Native American Cultural Center<\/a>\u00a0helped her transition from the quieter Navajo Reservation to the NAU campus. The\u00a0Transfer and Online Connections<\/a>\u00a0lounge provided Sage a place to study and lockers for books so she didn\u2019t have to carry books back and forth to her car in the commuter parking lot.<\/p>\n Sage is now negotiating being an online voice student during the COVID-19 pandemic. She had moved into campus apartments for her second semester but moved back home when courses moved online. Her voice lessons use online apps, and she uses recorded tracks for piano music. \u201cWe\u2019re getting through it,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re finding better quality sounds for the videos, and we still get to see each other\u2014kind of\u2014through video.\u201d<\/p>\n For her, the extra effort she has put into her education is worth it. Sage wants to continue performing, of course. But she aspires to be a music educator and provide music therapy on the Reservation. \u201cI plan to come back to the Reservation and teach here because that\u2019s something that wasn\u2019t available to me as I was growing up,\u201d Sage said. \u201cI want to be able to give other youth that experience because music is just a great outlet.\u201d<\/p>\n By Cecile LeBlanc<\/p>\n https:\/\/legacy.nau.edu\/aspirations\/sage-bond\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sage aspires to be a music educator on the Navajo Reservation. She believes her education at NAU will make her a stronger performer and a better educator. Sage Bond is a performer. She has been singing and playing guitar professionally for ten years on stages across the country, from Arizona to New York. But she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":217,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/legacy.nau.edu\/transfer-online-connections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1343"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/legacy.nau.edu\/transfer-online-connections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/legacy.nau.edu\/transfer-online-connections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legacy.nau.edu\/transfer-online-connections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/217"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legacy.nau.edu\/transfer-online-connections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1343"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/legacy.nau.edu\/transfer-online-connections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2074,"href":"https:\/\/legacy.nau.edu\/transfer-online-connections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1343\/revisions\/2074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/legacy.nau.edu\/transfer-online-connections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legacy.nau.edu\/transfer-online-connections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legacy.nau.edu\/transfer-online-connections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\nMy teacher is finding ways to utilize my energy from that metal vocal style and putting it into opera.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n