Listening to Noah Dabney’s '24 lyrical interpretations during a jaw-dropping classical guitar recital and instinctively labeling him a Music major would be accurate, but would still fall woefully short in completing his academic portrait.

He’s also graduating this month with degrees in Chemistry and Health Sciences, making him a triple major, but back to the music.

Pick an event – any event – at Guilford and chances are Noah and his guitar have been there entertaining guests the past four years. He picked up the guitar at an early age when his parents encouraged him to find an instrument he might like to learn.

He quickly took to the instrument and excelled. Noah grew up in Radford, Va., and started college at the Cleveland Institute of Music but decided after the first year that, as much as he loved music, he wanted a STEM-related career. He knew about Guilford from his high school days attending the Eastern Music Festival.

He connected with Kami Rowan, Guilford’s Charles A. Dana Professor of Music, and told her of his college plans. “Kami showed me what Guilford could offer me and it was exactly what I was looking for,” says Noah. “There aren’t a lot of places you can tap into your music side and still reach your medical goals, but Guilford filled both of those for me.”

Noah says he’ll miss those close relationships with faculty that Guilford is famous for. “It’s kind of hard to wrap up in words what Kami and (other professors) have meant to me. They’re my mentors, my guides. They got me to where I am today.”

When he’s not performing, Noah can usually be found in a lab at the Frank Family Science Center. If Music seems an odd pairing with Chemistry and Health Sciences, think again.

Playing music in Dana Auditorium helps Noah across campus in Frank. When Noah struggles with a piece of music, he finds it helpful to break the composition down into parts that are more manageable. “That way I can address them individually before building it back together as a whole,” he says.

Noah says when a difficult concept comes up in Chemistry, he applies the same strategy of breaking the problem down and focusing on the component he is struggling with. “Once I figure it out I put it back into the bigger concept – just like music,” he says.

Noah will be applying to medical school next year. He’s interested in orthopedics or possibly muscular neurology. He took part in a medical shadowing study abroad class in Spain with Dana Professor of Chemistry Anne Glenn two years ago that helped convince him of a future career in medicine.

“I got to experience a wide array of things and the ortho surgery I saw there was most engaging for me. That’s one thing I’m really grateful for from Guilford. The number of avenues it opened up for me to be me, to explore what I wanted to explore. Not just one discipline but all of them.”