“I’ll be a little cliché. I’ve been singing my whole life,” Chelsea Wright said. Senior vocal performance major Chelsea Wright has been in choirs since elementary school. In high school, Wright participated in All-State choir both junior and senior year, and honors choir her senior year. She took part in solo and ensemble throughout grade school and was talented enough to earn best of day. She took joy in acappella competitions with her high school a cappella group, Table for 12.

Her passion for music did not stop there. Chelsea has been singing in the Millikin U-Choir since her sophomore year. She was able to experience singing in New York’s Carnegie Hall with her classmates and has recently won the Concerto-Aria competition with the Millikin-Decatur Symphony Orchestra. The concert will take place at Kirkland Fine Arts Center on Feb. 1 at 7:30 p.m. Chelsea has fallen in love with the piece she is singing for the MDSO concert, named “Mon Cœur S’ouvre à ta Voix” from the popular opera Samson and Delilah.

Chelsea loves performing, “when you step up on stage, it’s the only time you can choose what comes next,” Wright said. For some, performing in front of people may be stressful, but to Chelsea, it’s relieving. “This is your one chance to give everything you’ve got,” she said. Besides performing, she spends a lot of time focusing on her schoolwork. In her free time, she writes and is currently working on a few short books. This past summer, Chelsea took up painting. She finds it incredibly relaxing and a great way to get rid of stress.

Ambition runs deep for Chelsea. She has goals and is pushing to achieve them. After graduating from Millikin in the spring, she wants to move straight to Italy for graduate school. Though she has yet to pick out a school and is still working towards becoming fluent in Italian, Chelsea will not let it stop her. Due to a busy schedule, she has not taken part in many musicals or operas on campus but is optimistic of playing the role of Carmen many times in her future.