Luca Savarino
For rising college freshman Luca Savarino, life is about finding the hardest thing to do and then doing it.
It’s playing his tenor saxophone with the high school band when he was only in sixth grade. It’s going to Messiah University’s jazz camp as a seventh grader who hated the unknowns of jazz but went anyway. It’s winning a YoungArts Award this past December for his efforts, yet already looking for the next big leap.
“That’s kind of always been my thing,” Savarino said. “If I’m scared of something, eventually, I just learn to love it.”
The YoungArts Award in question is an annual, national competition that receives thousands of applications each year, all from artists between 15 and 18 years old. The program, hosted by The National Foundation for the Advancement of Artists, offers winners mentorship, financial awards and professional development. Some previous winners include 2021 inaugural poet Amanda Gorman, actor Timothée Chalamet and actress Viola Davis.
Savarino applied in both his junior and senior years at the Harrisburg Academy, winning as a senior and joining 110 other winners in the jazz discipline from across the country. Auditioning for such an award with national reach and notable alumni like YoungArts might be intimidating for some, but Savarino didn’t seem to sweat it.
“It didn’t feel like much to me […] like any audition I would do for college,” Savarino said.
College is where his eyes are set now and his “next hardest thing”—the Manhattan School of Music in New York City.
“New York is absolutely a game changer for music, and it’s the highest level of competition you can have,” Savarino said. “Their students there really take this seriously, and they really want to follow their dreams.”
His dream, he said, begins by gathering all the knowledge and experience he can get his hands on in the city, then seeing where it might take him.
“Eventually, I think the dream really is to write my own music, make my own band, record albums, tour,” Savarino said. “It’s lofty, but I think I just need to find my space in the [jazz] world.”
Express Yourself
Like many aspiring musicians, Savarino started young. He first picked up the tenor sax, one that belonged to his grandfather, in fourth grade when he joined band. The beginning of his jazz career, however, began by learning under his teacher, Kurt Sipe.
“Pretty much everyone who went through his studio ended up in the all-state band and going to college where they wanted to go to college,” Savarino said. “From the beginning, he encouraged me, made it seem possible.”
Since then, Savarino played with district and all-state orchestras all three years he was eligible, created his own jazz quartet and became the student representative on the board of the Central Pennsylvania Friends of Jazz, just to scratch the surface.
Harrisburg Academy music teacher Dave Shover joined the school’s staff in 2023 and said it has been a privilege to be able to teach Savarino and play a part in his journey.
“My first day here, I was sitting in my office, and I hear this wonderful jazz music playing,” Shover said. “I thought it was a recording, and it’s [Luca] just sitting in there by himself practicing.”
Each time Shover accompanied Savarino to something like the district jazz band concerts, he said that other schools’ directors would gush over Savarino’s playing and tell Shover how lucky he must be to have him in his jazz band—although Harrisburg Academy doesn’t have one.
“He’s working on it himself,” Shover said. “He’s working on his own craft. Most people on the outside don’t know that.”
Savarino said that, while his practice regimen changes often, he always comes back to his three stages: maintenance, which he said is like hitting the gym but for instrument technique; transcribing, meaning listening to solos and songs then writing it down; and finally, “[expanding] his sense of music” by listening to new music and learning new tunes.
“I think that’s the best way to express yourself. Just listening and letting everything you’ve practiced, everything you’ve heard, everything you’ve done just respond,” Savarino said.
In his personal music-listening, he doesn’t choose camps in a way that might restrict his playing but often finds himself gravitating towards jazz from the 1950s and ‘60s—artists like Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and Cannonball Adderley, to name a few.
“The sound that really inspires me is something that comes from the tradition, but then also kind of acknowledges how far we’ve come since the ‘50s,” Savarino said.
Despite the years of hard work and racking up myriad accomplishments before he even graduated high school, he said he does not worry about hitting any sort of ceiling. He’s ready for the long-haul.
“I think jazz is one of those things that is never-ending, you can never get finished,” Savarino said. “There are periods when I doubt myself and I lose steam, but I’m always sucked back in no matter how hard it is.”
For more information about Harrisburg Academy, visit www.harrisburgacademy.org. For more information about Central PA Friends of Jazz, visit www.friendsofjazz.org.
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