Caleb Doughty has achieved a lot for a young man, and a lot of his accolades come from his love of a musical instrument. 

The 17-year-old from Athens is a violinist. His years of dedication to the art, and science, has allowed him to play in places many only dream about. One of those places is the Notre-Dame Basilica of Montreal, Canada. 

Doughty’s latest triumph came this summer when he played the violin in Italy with the Rome Music Festival Orchestra. 

Doughty, the youngest person to perform, was invited by the conductor of the Nashville Youth Orchestra at Vanderbilt University, Dr. Carol Nies, who is also the guest conductor of the Rome Music Festival Orchestra. 

“It was kind of surreal,” Doughty said of being invited to perform. “It was really fantastic.” 

Doughty, along with his mom, Flo, and dad, Shawn, made the monthlong trip to Europe together.

Doughty said he had been to Europe before, but that was a trip to London, England, and the British Isles. On this trip, he found himself in several other places, like Germany, Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Belgium and Italy. 

The trip ended in Rome, where Doughty performed at St. Paul Within the Walls and other churches and cathedrals throughout the city. He also played violin alongside Massimiliano Drapello, a well-known opera singer in Rome. 

Doughty said playing at St. Paul Within the Walls was “absolutely incredible” because of the acoustics. 

“It’s incredible to hear all the sounds and so cool to think the building was built a thousand years ago or so,” he said, adding he thought to himself, “here I am performing.” 

The only other time he had been in a church with similar acoustics was when he performed in Montreal. 

“It was almost surreal to watch your son play in a city that is thousands of years old and so rich in history, visual and musical arts, and in unbelievably beautiful venues,” Flo said. “We walked the same streets the Apostles of Jesus walked, and we got to visit where some of them were imprisoned and the tombs where they were buried.”

Flo said Caleb performed solo at the church directly across the street from Castel Sant’Angelo, where construction started in 135 AD. 

“It was just amazing to see and experience all of it,” Flo said. “He has worked really hard for a lot of years, and to see him receive fruit for all of his labor was a beautiful thing.”

Doughty has a lot of memories from the summer trip. 

He said he enjoyed getting to experience other cultures and seeing how other people live. 

He was able to visit a lot of places where World World II unfolded. He visited Auschwitz and Oskar Schindler’s factory in Krakow, Poland, as well as Dachau in Munich, Germany, and Eagle’s Nest in Austria. 

He visited the convent where the movie “The Sound of Music” was filmed, and he got to view Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s violin in Salzburg, Austria. He even got to visit Ludwig van Beethoven’s grave in Vienna, Austria. 

His favorite city is Rome. 

“It’s a really nice city,” he said.

He knew he wanted to see the ruins when he arrived.. 

“That’s something you do when you go to Rome,” he said, adding they got a taxi from the airport before he realized what was actually happening. “I was like, ‘Wow, the airport is right in the ruins.’ We keep going and going and going, and I was like, ‘Wow, we are still in the ruins.’”

He looked around and realized all of modern-day Rome is built on ruins. 

He loved the eats, too. He enjoyed the foods of Italy, but said Poland also had some really good food.

His favorite were Polish pierogis, or filled dumplings. 

‘A God thing’ 

“It’s a God thing,” Doughty said about all he’s been able to experience. “I couldn’t do this on my own. I feel like I have to give God a lot of credit for what I’m able to do.

“There were times I said,  ‘I can’t do this anymore,’ but then I thought, ‘I can keep going and it will really pay off.’ It really did.” 

Doughty was 7 years old when he started playing the violin. 

He started playing with the Huntsville Youth Orchestra and was later invited to play with the Nashville Youth Orchestra. 

Doughty, who is home-schooled, is also a dual-enrollment student. When he graduates  high school next year, he will have two years of studies at Calhoun Community College under his belt. He’s not sure about his plans when it comes to violin, but he does know he wants to pursue computer science as a career. 

“I’m a big computer nerd, and I love computer science,” he said. “I was thinking about doing that and doing violin as a side thing. 

“You know musicians starve to death,” he laughed. 

He loves music, though, and has advice for others interested in playing the violin. 

“Patience is the key to it all,” he said. “If you don’t have the patience, you won’t get very far. It’s all about waiting. It doesn’t sound good at first, and it’s so hard to keep going. After a few years, you finally hit that point where you’re like, ‘Wow, this is actually sounding really good. I might really enjoy this.’ Until then, it’s all about keeping your head above water and having the will to keep going.” 

Doughty said the hardest thing about learning the violin is technique.

“It’s a difficult instrument to learn,” he said. 

The classical culture is hard to learn, too, he said. 

“Though it’s been around 400-odd years, it’s very traditional,” he said.  

Some of his favorite composers are Mozart, Gustav Holst and Dmitri Shostakovich. His all-time favorite is Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. 

“I love Rismky-Korsakov,” he said. “He’s definitely a favorite.”

Through his talents, Doughty has done a lot of things adults don’t get the opportunity to do in life. 

He said if he had to do it over, he would do it all again.