When Dorian Bandy ’10 looks back each semester, he realizes that he has done something that he could have never pictured himself doing. Last fall semester, the music major and college scholar conducted a three-hour long Mozart opera that featured a cast of international musicians and dramatic performers.

This semester, Bandy won the highly competitive Marshall Scholarship. The scholarship will fund Bandy and 34 other college students across the country as they pursue higher degrees in the United Kingdom.

Although he still has to go through the formal application process, Bandy wishes to use the scholarship towards the study of Baroque violin at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where Bandy described as the center of Baroque music.

Bandy, who aspires to become a professional conductor in the future, could not pinpoint a specific time when his interest in music first sparked; both his parents are musicians. “I grew up with music all around me,” he said.

The Baroque violinist and violist said that musicality has always been very natural to him, but he has to work very hard to improve his technique of playing the violin, which never comes easily.

“Music is an extremely cruel discipline,” Bandy said. “There are so many ways to be so good, but if anything is out of place you remain far from perfect,” he added. Distinguished scholar: Dorian Bandy ’10 faces the audience in Sage Chapel after leading Les Petits Violons in a concert that pays tribute to Joseph Haydn on Oct. 27.

Bandy decided to come to Cornell because he was attracted by the music department’s graduate program and has admired its two professors — Prof. Neal Zaslaw and Prof. Malcolm Dilson — for a long time. He arrived at Ithaca with the hopes of working with them. Now Zaslaw is one of Bandy’s six advisors, whom he works closely with. Zaslaw described Bandy as a “very active and energetic” person and the type of student that professors like to teach.

“Whatever you give him, he takes it and runs with it,” Zaslaw said.

As a freshman, Bandy had planned to study musicology and literature. Now a senior, Bandy said that he has achieved these plans “in a very different way than I ever thought I would, and it’s led me to places I never expected it to.”

“Baroque violin is a perfect example: When I came to Cornell, the idea of playing a period instrument was still just a dream that I thought would never really happen; now it’s happened, thanks to the resources here — and by resources, I mean the incredible professors, the fine instrument collection, and the small but talented population of students interested in playing these instruments,” Bandy stated in an e-mail.

Bandy has organized and conducted “Don Giovanni” last fall at Risley’s Great Hall — a “very ambitious project” that was unusual as the opera was staged successfully without the acoustics of an opera house, according to Zaslaw. He added that Bandy was “very entrepreneurial” as he raised the money, recruited the people and directed the entire project.

“I’ve been teaching at Cornell for 40 years and I’ve never seen anybody do this before,” Zaslaw said.

Next semester, Bandy plans to repeat his feat and conduct another opera at Cornell. On March 12 to 14, he will stage Jean-Jacques Rosseau’s “The Cunning Man” at Risley as part of a music conference that explores 18th Century music.

Despite his busy schedule, Bandy stressed that he loves what he does and has a lot of fun doing them.

“It stopped being work because you like it a lot,” Bandy said.