Every year Los Angeles’ The Music Center chooses students from schools across Southern California for their nationally acclaimed performing arts competition scholarship. This year one of Thousand Oaks’ very own percussionist, junior Saoirse Sipes was chosen into the top 113 students that have advanced to become semifinalists in The Music Center’s 37th Annual Spotlight program. This prestigious program received nearly two thousand auditions this year from amazing applicants throughout California.

Sipes had to go through two rounds of auditions to become a semifinalist, first a video audition and once he conquered that round, Sipes was invited to the Music Center to then go through auditions there. One more round of auditions will decide if Sipes will be winning the scholarship.

This is nothing new for Sipes as he was also a semifinalist in 2024 for the 36th Annual Spotlight Program.

Through Sipes’s journey to becoming a semi-finalist, someone might ask how he prepared for such an award, anyone else might be worrying about practicing and getting ready to audition for something so big, but not Sipes.

“I didn’t really prepare, I just did the requirements and practiced what they wanted me to play,” Sipes said. “What I’m really practicing for is my grand prize finalist audition.”

Sipes is also a national young arts winner for 2024 and 2025, and has been formerly recognized for his astonishing talent as a drummer.

“The special thing about it is getting to go to the music center to be judged by a panel in person,” Sipes said “A lot of auditions now are purely online and you send videos and they evaluate you there but having to play for real people, having to adjust your volume to the room, that’s challenging but also like you are playing real music for real people instead of video digital music for people you don’t know.”