Meet Laurin McCoy
Featured Youth Emerging Artist
April 2025
April 2025
Meet Laurin McCoy: Our Youth Featured Artist of the Month
aka The Multi-Talented Music Maven Making Moves with Heart & Hustle!
Let’s talk about Laurin McCoy. This month’s Emerging Youth Artist isn’t just doing the most, she’s doing it with purpose, precision, and a whole lotta passion!
A proud honor student and graduating senior at Davidson Fine Arts Magnet School, Laurin has been putting in work, seven years of mastering band, piano, and dance and racking up more awards than we can count without a spreadsheet. We’re talking Leadership of the Arts in three disciplines, Symphonic Band officer, Tri-M Music Honor Society, Brass Musician of the Year, and first chair, section leader… whew!
Oh, and did we mention she just returned from performing at an international music festival in Hawaii? No big deal.
But Laurin’s magic isn’t just in her medals, it’s in her mindset. She’s balancing AP classes, dual enrollment, scholarships, and essays (and more essays) with a weekly schedule so organized it might need its own TED Talk.
And somehow, she’s still got time to inspire other young creatives through her passion project: Laur’n & Friends, an empowering music organization she founded to remove barriers for students pursuing music.
This young SHERO is building a musical lending library, offering free lessons and mentoring, and linking families with the tools they need to support their children’s creativity all while dreaming of one day playing with the New York Philharmonic or in the orchestra pit of a Broadway show. (She got a taste of that dream when she visited the Aladdin pit in NYC and later performed in her school’s production of Chicago. Full-circle moment alert!)
Her proudest moment so far? Organizing her own full-length concert at Jessye Norman School of the Arts, An Evening with Laur’n and Friends. Yep, she curated it, directed it, and absolutely slayed it. All while staying grounded and committed to community service, mental health education, and mentorship.
When asked what advice she’d give to other youth artists?
“Practice. Practice. Practice. Not just your instrument, practice performing, creating, preparing… ALL of it. Respect the process.”
In three words, she describes her art as: Passionate, Powerful, and Uplifting. We couldn’t agree more.
So here’s to you, Laurin, the soundtrack of your life is just getting started, and we’re honored to turn the volume up for the world to hear.
Want to support Laur’n & Friends?
Drop a line to [email protected] to donate an instrument, sign up for lessons, or connect!