When Laura Mulligan Thomas arrived at Charlottesville High School in 1982, she had her work cut out for her. The recent James Madison University grad and newly hired orchestra director was greeted by just eight young musicians. “We had a serious identity problem,” Mulligan Thomas recalled during a TEDx talk she gave a few years ago. “Most people didn’t even know that we had an orchestra at the high school. So we set out to change that.”
Nearly four decades later, her award-winning group has 100 members, and its alumni teach music and perform in symphonies and chamber ensembles throughout the United States and Europe. Others have played in pop, rock, and country bands, including for the likes of Taylor Swift, Dave Matthews, and Michael Bublé, to name just a few.
Ask about the secrets to her success, and Mulligan Thomas laughs. Then, after a slight pause, she says she loves teenagers. “When guided and inspired, they are capable of amazing feats of artistry. And I’m so grateful that I get to spend this important, informative time in their lives with them.”
All of her classes are her favorites, she says, adding that she keeps in touch with many former students. (She’s particularly close to one of them—Emily Thomas Waters, her daughter and the orchestra director at Walker Upper Elementary.)
“I have these really rich experiences with these humans, and every four years there is a new crop, but only 25 percent of them turn over, so I get to keep 75 percent of my kids every year,” Mulligan Thomas says with obvious delight.
And while those kids were with her, they earned awards in music festivals all over the country, as well as in England, Austria, Italy, France, Ireland, and the Caribbean. Large trophies line shelves in the CHS orchestra room, but more important than all that hardware is the sense of community Mulligan Thomas has created. Her students “work together, alongside one another; they give and take and respect each other’s opinions,” she says. “They’re contributing and productive and supported and part of something that is really special.”
She likens it to being on a winning team, and calls herself the coach and cheerleader. She says she has high standards, but she also lets everyone know that mistakes are part of the process: “You have to take risks to grow.” Her teenage musicians do their best work when they’re told what they’re doing right, because “getting picked apart is not healthy,” she says.
Another thing that’s not healthy is the forced isolation brought on by a pandemic. When COVID-19 hit and in-person classes were put on hold last year, Mulligan Thomas knew it was “really important to keep everyone’s spirits up.” Even on the grayest winter days, she wanted remote classes to be “fun and positive,” and she invited several guest artists, “alumni who were doing amazing things,” to join the Zoom sessions. (When the orchestra was finally all together for an in-person May concert on the Charlottesville High School football field, they wore T-shirts that said, “We survived Zoom rehearsals.”)
Mulligan Thomas, who plays cello and piano, says she’s always working on a new, interesting project or two (she and her daughter played with indie-rock band Bright Eyes at the Ting Pavilion in August, and she’s looking forward to a return visit to CHS from West African drummer Massamba Diop later this year), but it’s the orchestra that remains the most interesting thing of all. Thirty-nine years in, she says, and “I still love it.”