Jake Philipak holds his clarinet while standing in the lobby of the Blanche M. Touhill Performing Arts Center. Philipak is majoring in music education at UMSL after starting college as a physics major at Missouri University of Science and Technology. (Photos by Derik Holtmann)

The audience sat captivated by every note that came from Jake Philipak’s clarinet as he stood at the center of the Anheuser-Busch Performance Hall stage March 18 at the Blanche M. Touhill Performing Arts Center.

Philipak, a sophomore music education major at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, was playing “Première rhapsodie,” a renowned concerto by French composer Claude Debussy. His fingers danced up and down on the keys as the melancholy sound he made floated over the UMSL Symphony Orchestra behind him and carried throughout the auditorium during the orchestra’s annual concert featuring winners of the Young Artist Concerto Competition.

“It’s an extremely difficult piece to perform on the clarinet,” said Assistant Teaching Professor David Wacyk, who conducted the orchestra that night and serves as UMSL’s director of instrumental studies. “It was really exciting for me and for us to be able to put it all together, because he was performance-ready from the first rehearsal.”

That moment reinforced once more that Philipak was where he belonged.

Philipak had come to UMSL at a pivot point of his life in January 2024. After growing up in St. Charles County and graduating from Fort Zumwalt West High School, he had started college at Missouri University of Science and Technology, where he thought he was doing the practical thing by majoring in physics. But he began to feel almost immediately like it wasn’t the right fit.

“It was a combination of everything,” Philipak said recently. “I was extremely homesick, and on top of that, everything there felt stiff. I also learned pretty quickly that learning about physics and majoring in it are two very different things.”

He started thinking about moving closer to home and following a different academic path. His mind kept leading him to music.

His mother, Barbara, is a music teacher, and though his father, Richard, works as a software engineer, he’s also been a keyboardist in different bands throughout his life. Both UMSL alums, they passed along their passion for music to their son, who remembers being 3 years old and memorizing the names of all the instruments.

Jake Philipak plays his clarinet during a concert last Thursday for the UMSL Wind Ensemble and UMSL Symphony Orchestra at the Blanche M. Touhill Performing Arts Center.

Philipak started playing in band in sixth grade and took up clarinet a year later. Originally, he chose the instrument because it was the same one his best friend played, and it ensured they could sit by each other in class. But Philipak grew to cherish it and has continued playing ever since.

“I think I’ve always enjoyed the process of making music and the process of interacting with people that make music,” he said. “I think that the more that you’re surrounded by good people who are just as interested in the music as you are, it’s only going to get better. All throughout high school, I was surrounded by good musicians.”

Even at Missouri S&T, Philipak joined the orchestra and continued to play. But it took his experience studying physics to be open to thinking about music as a major – and ultimately a career.

“It’s not unheard of for a student to go into some other field first and decide to set aside their musical ambitions, just because they don’t know what the possibilities are,” Wacyk said. “My colleagues and I are constantly trying to counsel students on what career options there are, and how you can follow that passion. But I think, in his case specifically, it just became clear once he started working on towards a different degree at a different school, that no, actually, this is something that he needs to be doing. He needs to be making music and at a really high level. We’re certainly grateful that he chose to make that shift and chose UMSL as the place to do that.”

Philipak has had no regrets.

The facilities at UMSL – with the performance spaces at the Touhill and the renovations nearing completion in the Arts Administration Building – are on par with the best in the Midwest, and he was immediately struck by the welcoming environment fostered by both students and faculty alike in the Department of Music.

“I’ve always been somewhat confident about my playing ability, but in terms of actually finding a place here, I was fairly nervous,” he said. “In every classroom that I’ve been, it has been just about as easy as possible. The staff here have made it easy. The students here are extremely kind.”

They’re also encouraging. Philipak, who has received a Curators Scholarship and the Music Admission Scholarship, said he has never felt pressure to perform at a certain level or fear of the consequences of making mistakes.

If anything, Wacyk said Philipak has elevated the department with his talent, and he’s taken advantage of opportunities to perform with the UMSL Wind Ensemble, the UMSL Symphony Orchestra and Triton Sound, the university’s pep band.

“Certainly, in the ensembles that he’s a part of, his musicianship is beyond what I would expect of a freshman, now sophomore, on any campus,” Wacyk said. “He won our concerto competition, which we hold every year.”

Being at UMSL has also reunited Philipak with woodwinds instructor Jeanine York-Garesche, from whom he took private lessons throughout high school, unaware that she was a member of the UMSL faculty.

Philipak is pursuing his bachelor’s degree in music education, knowing that wherever music takes him will likely involve some teaching. But he would like to explore a career as a performer and plans to pursue a master’s degree in music performance after graduation.

“I’ve always had a place in my heart for music,” Philipak said. “I’ve always loved music, but it wasn’t until I first came here that I really started to find where I really was with music, and it was a lot deeper than I originally thought. It’s just been a blast.”