BUFFALO, NY (WIVB) – The Buffalo Philharmonic celebrates Mozart’s birthday with two special concerts this week and honors his best work of art.
And a soloist on the show is also worth celebrating.
“My brother and I would just sing and harmonize with every song that we heard on the radio,” said Rachel Mikol, a soprano who grew up in Orchard Park.
At Orchard Park High School, Rachel Mikol was involved in the musicals and marching band. She majored in music education and vocal performance at Ithaca College and then attended graduate school in Indiana.
After graduating, she moved to New York to pursue her dream of making a living in the big city.
But behind her big voice is a big, resilient story.
In 2017, while she was still in grad school, Rachel found out she had thyroid cancer.
“My mom looked at me one day after I came home from grad school and said, ‘That lump on your neck looks bigger, maybe you should get that checked out,'” she said. “And I said, ‘Okay, I don’t feel anything because I look at myself every day, but sure.'”
Doctors removed her thyroid. After a short time she was considered cancer-free.
But four years later, at just 30 years old, she was diagnosed again.
This time it was breast cancer.
“I was watching a TV show where one of the characters had breast cancer, and I was like, ‘Oh, maybe I should get a self-examination.'”
This self-examination led her to find a small lump.
Breast cancer would force her to undergo much harsher treatment than thyroid cancer had years before. She survived 16 rounds of chemotherapy, a double mastectomy, reconstructive surgery, and then 28 rounds of radiation.
in July 2022, about a year after finding the lump, she rang the bell at her NYC hospital, marking the end of the cancer… once again.
Rachel agrees that it can be difficult to thrive in the industry she works in. But she said this journey made her realize the importance of following your dreams.
“You never know what’s going to come your way, so you have to make the best of what’s going on in your life and what you want to do,” she said. “It sounds cliche, but I had to have a second cancer to realize that and to commit to it with everything I have. I just want to do the things I love and be there for the people I love and just do the things that mean the most to me.”
Rachel is one of four soloists appearing in Mozart Masterpieces this weekend on Saturday and Sunday. The celebrated conductor Joann Falletta will lead the BPO these days.
For tickets and more information click here.
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