When he first encountered the cello in middle school, Eddie Adams did not know that it would become his lifeline.
On a winter afternoon, Eddie Adams walked into a Kohl’s department store in Fairfax County looking for a red button-down shirt. He really didn’t have the money, but he was set to go onstage at the Kennedy Center the next day to play the cello in a quartet with three of his classmates from George Mason University. They had all agreed to wear red, and he didn’t want to let them down.
He tried to force these thoughts from his mind as he stepped onstage to face the Kennedy Center audience that evening, carefully positioning himself on his chair and nodding at the other players in the quartet. He took a deep breath and gripped his bow, lowering it onto the strings of his cello. “They make fun of me when I sound intelligent. They make fun of my grammar, the inflection of my voice,” Adams said. His mother, Myra Mason, said his siblings were jealous that Adams did well in school, but she believes her son is spurning his racial identity and family — something Adams denies.
Eddie Adams, 20, practices at George Mason University Eddie Adams, 20, practices at George Mason University Eddie Adams, 20, practices at George Mason University Eddie Adams, 20, practices at George Mason University His mother said she noticed that when Adams hit middle school, he became withdrawn from the family, though she did not understand why. “He was unhappy with who he was,” she said.“He was extraordinarily introverted,” Fowkes said. “At first it was really hard to read him.
Eddie Adams, 20, with his cello In 2016, Adams was attending yet another high school — this time, Forest Park in Prince William County — and was days away from graduating when he got the call that his oldest brother, Najee Alexander Mason, 24, had been shot to death by a roommate, possibly in a dispute over money.
Related An infant did not have any hospital visitors for five months. So this nurse adopted her. Feeling betrayed and lost, and sleeping in his car, Adams said he decided to turn to Fowkes and his former high school orchestra teacher, Benjamin Pereyra, for help. Adams began to play assigned excerpts from a Brahms’s symphony, and Huang did something she had never done before: She dropped her pencil. Then she forgot to score him.
One week, he realized he was in danger of failing a class, so he took the weekend off from Starbucks to study, setting off an unfortunate chain of events. The missed work meant he didn’t have enough money to pay his mother’s car insurance in exchange for using her car. Then he didn’t have a way to get to work, so he lost his job. As a result, he had to return the cello he’d been renting.
In the fall of 2018, Adams decided not to take a regular job so he could focus on his schoolwork. Through financial assistance, he got a meal plan covered. But even with that and occasional paid gigs through school, his living expenses were crushing him. To look the part, Adams stood with his head bowed in the men’s bathroom at Eagle Bank Arena before the performance as a friend sprayed his hair electric green, one of the school’s colors.“Edward!” Prioleau jokingly snapped back, trying to calm his friend.
Related An 80-year-old janitor comes to work expecting to clean. Instead, nearly 800 students sing him happy birthday. Teen boys rated their female classmates based on looks. The girls fought back. The riled-up crowd didn’t appear to notice, but for Adams, it was humiliating. The minute-long solo performance seemed to last forever. He wanted to stop playing and walk off.
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