Passing the Torch: Fine Arts Festival Mentor Helps Fellow Pianist Achieve Dream

For Brady Billingsley, growing up at Elm Springs Assembly of God was like a worshipful musical family gathering.

His grandfather Glynn L. Trusty pastors the Springdale, Arkansas, congregation of around 60. Billingsley often played flute and French horn with the church’s band. He sang hymns on stage with his cousins.

But his passion was piano, which his grandmother Jane Trusty, Elm Springs’ music director, began teaching him in kindergarten. For Sunday worship during his adolescent years, he, his grandma and his aunt Kim Trusty Krueger each took turns at the piano.

In 1987, Aunt Kim entered the piano solo division of Fine Arts Festival, the annual AG event for students in grades six through 12. Early on, Billingsley set a lofty goal: to receive the Award of Merit in her event at the national meet.

The festival showcases some of the nation’s best musicians and other artists. Billingsley knew he’d need top training. To that end, at age 13 he earned a place in Geneva, Switzerland, at the prestigious Juilliard School’s two-week summer program for gifted youth ages 12 to 18 aspiring for careers in the arts.

Once in Geneva, he shared his goal of receiving the Award of Merit at Fine Arts Festival with an instructor. In private, however, that teacher expressed doubt to a faculty colleague, Chèrie Roe, who holds an undergrad in music performance from North Central University and master’s degrees in collaborative piano from Juilliard and Cleveland Institute of Music. How could Juilliard, among the world’s elite musical institutions, with its instructors grounded in classical music, help students pursuing gospel music?

Roe was floored: She’d grown up in First Assembly of God in Warren, Ohio, when her state’s district youth director was Doug Clay, who oversaw Ohio’s Fine Arts Festival events. Clay was present in 1995 in St. Louis, Missouri, when Roe herself had been the Merit recipient in the national piano solo division of that very contest. He is now general superintendent of the Assemblies of God.

Billingsley, for his part, was likewise stunned by Roe’s roots in Fine Arts Festival. “For sure only the Lord could have done that,” he says.

For two weeks in Geneva, Roe became Billingsley’s piano instructor.

She recollects a conversation with her young student, who asked, “Do you think I can win the whole thing?”

Roe knew all too well the depth of talent at the national event. Her answer was blunt: “No, Brady, you’re not ready. This is good but not good enough.

“You’re good and you’ve got a lot of talent, but you’ve got a lot of work to do.”

Roe deemed Billingsley’s song selection for Fine Arts as a bit ambitious for the middle-schooler’s skill level. And after he completed the two-week piano training, he, Roe and Billingsley’s mom, Kristen Billingsley, also a pianist and alumni from Fine Arts Festival, kept in touch.

Billingsley notes that, in time, he reaped the benefit of Roe’s excellent advice. By age 16, he was ready for the challenge of the difficult piece he’d chosen years before.

“I spent those three years coming back to that piece as my technique developed,” he says. “Talking to Chèrie ignited the spark even more. She’d gone through the process and had become the champion. That was very inspiring.”

For his 2019 Fine Arts piano solo, Billingsley chose to honor his aunt; she had played "Jesus Never Fails” as her own contest entry more than three decades before.

“Using the same song she’d used felt more like the passage of a torch,” he says. Billingsley arranged that song as a medley with “My Tribute” (To God be the Glory).

He didn’t receive his coveted Award of Merit. Immediately he set his sights on the next year’s festival.

Billingsley carefully studied Fine Arts’ evaluators’ comments of his presentations, “Trying to take their advice, do the most I could to change the general effect of music I was choosing, and my arrangement,” Billingsley says.

Indeed, a year later he won the Arkansas District Fine Arts, qualifying him to advance to the national festival.

Then came the COVID-19 lockdown. It canceled the event.

Again, he didn’t give up. During his months at home, he performed on digital platforms and continued practicing.

The next year, the summer before his senior year of high school, would be his last chance to enter. Fortunately, Fine Arts Festival resumed. Once more, Billingsley won the Arkansas District event. He advanced to nationals in Orlando, Florida.

Billingsley entered several music categories, including piano solo, for which he arranged the songs "Majesty" and "Unshakable Kingdom" in medley, and classical piano solo, for which he played "Chopin Etude Opus 10 number 4", the piece he also used for college auditions. Additionally, he entered woodwind solo, for which he played flute, and brass, for which he played the mellophone—a French horn used in marching bands.

Because of the sheer size of the national event, Fine Arts presentations are spread across the better part of a week. Billingsley had to wait four days to learn his outcomes. “But before knowing the results, I just felt this peace that I had come and done the best I could do,” he says.

In woodwind, he was second runner-up. In brass and piano solo, he was runner-up.

In the final shot at his premier event, classical piano solo, in 2021 Billingsley achieved the goal that initially connected him with Chèrie Roe: like her, Billingsley received the Fine Arts Festival Award of Merit.

Today Billingsley is studying English and philosophy at Harvard University; at nearby Berklee College of Music, his major is gospel and contemporary performance and audio production.

Roe ponders her own legacy as part of the grand history of Fine Arts. “I was able to [receive] the national award because of those who poured into my life and talent at Warren First and in my lessons,” she says. “To then be a mentor to Brady was truly special.

“It is this passing of the torch that will keep the light of Fine Arts shining brightly for generations to come,” Roe says.

In due season, Billingsley will guide those who come behind him.

“I trust that God will open that door for me when the time comes, just as He did when He put Chèrie and I together at the Juilliard program,” Billingsley says.