For Mount Vernon senior, Lily Cripe, music comes naturally, very naturally. She started playing her first instrument, the viola, when she was in fourth grade, and knows how to play seven instruments at the time and is planning to learn more.

The instruments Cripe currently plays include the guitar, ukulele, piano, flute, viola, and the saxophone, the last of which she plays in the highly talented Marching Mustangs. Her latest instrument to learn is the bassoon, which she loves.

Her love for the bassoon came in the middle part of her junior year, around November 2018, after she attended a concert at the University of Iowa. While at the concert, the bassoon was an instrument that stuck out to her. So, the next day she marched into the office of Mount Vernon band director, Scott Weber, and said, “I want to play the bassoon.” Weber, knowing how hard it is to play the double-reed woodwind, thought she was crazy.

Her love for the instrument continues to this day. She likes the instrument because “it is big, low, and funky,” Cripe said with a giggle. Cripe still loves music and hopes to learn to play many more instruments in the near future.