By Angela Rose
Her fingers move effortlessly, dancing across the keys and filling the small room with a melody, powerful and tender.
The grand piano hugs three walls of the room, leaving hardly enough space for Rebecca Pacheco to put her book bag down.
?You have to love practicing and that?s what I?ve learned to love because it?s the only time that I really have to sincerely be by myself,? Pacheco said. ?It?s nice to think things through. A lot of times I really get engulfed in the music. In some ways, I am in my own kind of music trance world.?
Pacheco, a girl with Brazilian roots, is a piano performance major at BYU, after having completed two years in the BYU-Idaho music program. She has been preparing a 70-page piece for a concerto competition for a year, and she has it completely memorized.
It took this 19-year-old girl from Herndon, Va., a long time to find this strong commitment.
Pacheco comes from a family of five brothers and one sister, two of whom are currently professional opera singers. Her mother, Carol Pacheco, said her daughter loved the piano from a young age.
?She would run and get on my lap when I was teaching,? Carol said. ?She wanted to be there and wanted to be on the piano too.'
At age 3, Pacheco started taking formal lessons from her mom and got upset whenever she was taken off her booster seat away from the piano.
At 12, Pacheco decided she did not want lessons from her mother anymore.
?I didn?t really want to listen,? Pacheco said. ?If I learned to love piano, then I?d continue to do it, but not if someone was forcing me.?
At 14, after two years with numerous teachers, Pacheco decided she would teach herself the piano. She continued to play casually for three years until she decided she needed to play seriously again to get into the college of her choice.
Once at college, she committed herself to a serious study.
For the next four hours, she will be content practicing the music she has grown to love -- just her and the piano.