Piano

Personal Recitals

These are recitals I mostly perform solo and organized myself.

Jacqueline & Friends Recital #2: Electric Bungaloo — TBD

Intro

I don't have a date for this yet as I still have to learn a lot of material for this recital. But this recital was originally meant to be a celebration for when my actual piano get here (more on that in the My Piano section).

Since by now I am already a professional/getting paid to play piano and grew a lot since my last recital, I try to really push myself to raise the bar for myself as to what I deem to be acceptable for performing as well as trying to play more technically demanding songs.

I will also for the first time trying to READ (instead of straight up memorizing) some of the easier songs since I've been doing that for my church job. Of course since it hasn't happened yet these are just wishful thinking! But that is my aspiration for now

Setlist

Song Status

• Opener: Journey of a Lifetime — Frieren / Evan Calls Ready
• Motif 1 Memes x Video Game
  • Megalovania — Undertale / Toby Fox arr Kyle Landry Not Started
  • Night of Knights — Touhou arr Marasay8 Not Started
  • Wii Channel Theme / Nintendo To Read
  • Super Mario World Ending Theme / Nintendo arr Tom Brier Not Started
• Motif 2 My parents & Teachers yell at me to learn these
  • Piano Sonata No. 14 in C♯ Minor, Op. 27, No. 2 (Moonlight) — 1st mvt. / Ludwig van Beethoven To Read
  • Piano Sonata No. 14 — 2nd mvt...
    • Nocturne in E♭ Major, Op. 9, No. 2 / Frédéric Chopin In Progress
    • Étude in C Minor, Op. 10, No. 12 (Revolutionary) / Frédéric Chopin Good Enough
    • Clair de Lune / Claude Debussy Ready
  • Piano Sonata No. 14 — 3rd mvt. / Ludwig van Beethoven In Progress
• Motif 3 Animation x Depressioncore
  • Silhouette — Naruto / KANA-BOON arr Animenz Not Started
  • Hand up to the Sky — 86 / Sawano Hiroyuki arr J. Nikoji Not Started
  • Shelter / Porter Robinson arr Kyle Landry Not Started
  • The Story of Us — Frieren / Milet arr SLSMusic Not Started
• Closer: Snow Garland Fairy / Bemani Sound Team Ke!ju arr Jacqueline & Vlsaurus Arranged!

Jacqueline & Friends Recital # 1 — November 8th, 2025

This is a very special recital for me for so many reason, this was celebrating me purchasing an actual accoustic grand piano, first time hosting my own recital ever, learning enough material to fill out like 1 hr - 1 hr 15 mins worth of music, and while I didn't play it perfectly, play it good enough. But most important of all, I was so blessed that 33 of my friends actually came to listen to me play , this was at my house btw so we didn't even have enough chair or room for that matter and some people literally sat on my DDR machine to watch LOL

I organized the recital as a celebration for fun but I walked away from it feeling really proud, for the first time in my life I felt like I was somewhere as a pianist. I mean even if I wasn't getting paid for it, people showed up for me, listened to me and genuinely seemed like they were having fun. Heck Kelly even came and gave a speech about me too (I didn't ask her to!). I definitely would consider this day one of the top moment in my life

Setlist

• Opener: Overture XI — Dragon Quest XI / Sugiyama Koichi
• Motif 1 (includes opener): Video Game
  • Adventure — Dragon Quest III / Sugiyama Koichi
  • Once Upon A Time — Undertale / Toby Fox arr Frank Tedesco
  • BERGENSTRUCK/ASGORE — Undertale / Toby Fox arr Kyle Landry
• Guest Performer 1 — Juniper
  • City of Tears — Hollow Knight / Christopher Larkin
• Motif 2: Old White Men's shit that's also in rhythm games
  • Sonata No. 11 in A Major, K. 331 — 3rd mvt. Rondo alla Turca (Turkish March) / Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
  • Canon in D / Johann Pachelbel arr Lee Galloway
  • Bagatelle No. 25 — Für Elise / Ludwig van Beethoven arr Jacqueline drunk version
  • Winter — The Four Seasons, Op. 8 / Antonio Vivaldi arr Rosseau
• Guest Performer 2 — Brandon
  • Prelude in D♭ Major, Op. 28, No. 15 (Raindrop) / Frédéric Chopin
  • The Seasons, Op. 37a — April: Snowdrop / Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
• INTERMISSION
• Guest Performer 3 — Matt
  • Suika — Touhou
  • Restoring the Light, Facing the Dark — Touhou
  • Improv
• Motif 3: Animation x Depressioncore
  • The Owl House Credit Theme — The Owl House / TJ Hill
  • Yoru ni Kakeru (Racing Into the Night) / YOASOBI arr Ru's Piano
  • What's Your Favorite Color — Bee and Puppycat / Will Wiesenfeld
  • Sparkle — Kimi No Nawa (Your Name) / RADWIMPS arr Theister 2020 version
• BONUS/SECRET song: SMASHUP OF
  • All I Want for Christmas Is You ×
  • Never Gonna Give You Up ×
  • Megalovania — arr Jacqueline

Recording

Church

In December 2025 I saw a post in the Center Valley Facebook group by pure chance — a church was looking for a pianist. Even though I was really serious about piano, I was reallllyyyy nervous about applying. Like, I'm not classically trained, I'm literally a software engineer, went to school for computer science. Looking back I felt so bad for the pastor hahaha because I used every excuse I could to put myself down and talk myself out of it - "I'm not a Christian! I can't really sight read! I'm just a hobbyist! Have a backup just in case I suck!" My word.

But I'm really thankful the pastor was patient and pushed me, because I think taking on this job was arguably one of the most important decisions I've made in my life.

See, for most of my life I was basically chasing money. Yeah I had a genuine interest in CS, but I can't deny that a lot of my decisions were made not because it's something I *want* to do, but because it's something I *financially* should do. Like even with software — if I was chasing my passion, I would have loved to go into game dev instead, but game developers are stereotypically underpaid and overworked, so while I was in school I basically resigned myself to only applying to FAANG/Fintech type companies. And nowadays I really don't feel much for software anymore — it's truly just something I do to pay the bills.

But as I kept doing my church gig, I noticed a shift in my mindset. I'm not *that* good at piano yet, so it still takes me a lot of time to prepare for each service — considering how much I practice, the hourly rate probably wouldn't even hit minimum wage (though I'll obviously get faster as I keep at it). But... it didn't matter to me. It's not like I don't get burnout what do you mean bruh burnout is my default state, I do, and yet even when I feel it, all it takes is a single night of sleep before I find the motivation to keep pushing. I'm always so nervous before each service, and yet once it's done, I'm happy and glad I did it every time.

So why? I think I finally figured it out. When I write code, I'm usually working on projects that a PM came up with — features designed to make money or get something out of end users. I rarely see the people actually using what I build. And even when I do, I work on such a big engineering team that my contribution isn't significant enough to say *I specifically* made someone's day. But church is different — I see my impact immediately. I watch people enjoy the music I play, and since I get the freedom to pick songs for prelude, postlude, etc., people have told me they love what I choose and how I play. There's something really special about doing something where you can directly see the impact you make on people.

Over time, playing for church has become something I take real pride in. I obviously don't need the money as a software engineer, but I'm way more proud to say I make money playing piano for a church than I am about being a software engineer. The pressure and stress are still there of course — but I know it's something I want to do.

Slowly I started feeling like money isn't the most important thing in my life anymore. That's kinda scary actually since I started to... dream. I want so badly to go back to school to study piano. I wish my life had gone differently, that maybe I'd minored in piano instead of double majoring with math.

But that's okay, every day I work at piano, I get better. And most importantly, every day I'm doing something I really love. I know I have a really good life and I'm privileged enough to be in a position where I can do this church gig because I *want* to, not because I have to. But more than that, even though it sucks that I feel so strongly about this, I think it's also a blessing to feel so strongly about something, having a passion is both a blessing and a curse. Having this passion causes me to have regret, but it has also propelled me forward, it's because I feel so strongly about piano that I work hard at it every single day. And ya, maybe I could have done more with piano when I was younger, but there's no better time than now.

So from the bottom of my heart, thank you St. Luke's Evangelical Lutheran Church of Ferndale. Thank you for taking a chance on me, and thank you for letting me pursue my passion more seriously. I've improved so much since I started with you guys, but I want to keep improving, I want to play better, and I want to keep seeing you guys smile at the music I play.