7 Musicians You Didn’t Know Were Athletes

2. Charles Ives

A young Charles Ives in uniform for his high school baseball team

American modernist composer Charles Ives (1874–1954) was a multifaceted man as complex as his music. Largely ignored during his life, Ives’s music was far ahead of its time, characterized by an eclectic mix of American vernacular music, European Romanticism, polytonality, and other experimental elements. Although he trained as an organist and composer at Yale, he went into the insurance business after college, composing on the side.

Ives was passionate about competitive sports throughout his life. He was the captain of his school football teams and pitched for Hopkins Grammar School, where he led his high school baseball team to victory over the Yale freshmen for only the second time in the school’s history. In college, he played for Yale’s varsity football team. His coach reportedly said Ives could have been a champion sprinter had his musical studies not gotten in the way.

Ives often encoded sports references into his music. For instance, he memorialized an 1897 football game in Yale-Princeton Football Game, quoting football songs and making musical references to players and formations. Baseball was another lifelong obsession that made its way into numerous compositions, including “Some South-Paw Pitching,” a piano etude meant to strengthen the pianist’s left hand (or in boxing and baseball slang, their “south paw”).

3. Frederick Septimus Kelly

Frederick Septimus Kelly

Like Elizabeth Beisel, composer and pianist Frederick Septimus Kelly (1881–1916) has an Olympic medal to his name. Born in Australia, Kelly came to England to study at Eton and Oxford, where he took up rowing. He was highly accomplished as a sculler, setting a record in 1905 that held for 30 years, and he led crews to victory in multiple regattas. His last racing appearance came in the 1908 London Olympic Games, where he won gold as part of the England crew.

His fame as one of the best of his generation overshadowed his public reception as a musician, but music was his true passion. After leaving Oxford, he studied piano and composition in Frankfurt. He was performing, organizing concerts, and steadily finding success as a composer when war broke out in 1914. He immediately enlisted in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve. In the war, Kelly earned a Distinguished Service Cross after being wounded at Gallipoli but did not survive to receive the honor. He died in the last days of the Battle of the Somme, marking one of the many cultural losses of World War I.

Hear Frederick Septimus Kelly's Elegy for Strings: "In Memoriam Rupert Brooke"

4. Gustav Mahler

Alma and Gustav Mahler take a countryside stroll, 1911

Austrian composer Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) loved a good walk to get the creative juices flowing. He was a health enthusiast who was particularly fond of vigorous outdoor exercise. During his summer compositional retreats in the mountains, he would often hike for hours in the mornings, jotting down ideas in a notebook as he went. He also enjoyed climbing, swimming, and cycling. He took inspiration from the sweeping landscapes of Austria, Germany, and Italy for his compositions, baking the sounds of nature and evocations of the vistas into his grand symphonies. In fact, when conductor Bruno Walter visited him at his summer cottage, Mahler reportedly said, “Don’t bother looking at the view—I have already composed it.”

So it came as a terrible blow when, upon diagnosis of rheumatic heart disease at age 47, his doctor told him to avoid strenuous exercise. He was miserable without his hikes and struggled to compose. The composer gradually introduced walking back into his routine but paced himself, using a pedometer and constantly checking his pulse. He remained active in his final four years, fulfilling conducting engagements with the Metropolitan Opera and New York Philharmonic and composing three symphonic works (Das Lied von der Erde, Symphony No. 9, and an incomplete tenth symphony).

5. Chi-chi Nwanoku

Chi-chi Nwanoku (Photo: Eric Richmond)

British double bassist Chi-chi Nwanoku (b. 1956) had a different career in mind before she turned to music. As a teenager, she was scouted by an athletics coach and trained as a 100-meter sprinter. In fact, Nwanoku was on track to compete for Great Britain at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal. “Looking at my times at the age of 17, I was 11.8 [seconds] and getting faster,” she told the BBC’s Desert Island Discs. However, fate had other plans. About a year-and-a-half before the Olympics, she sustained a knee dislocation while standing in as a striker for the Reading Ladies Football Club at 18. Doctors told her she would never sprint again.

When she returned to school following knee surgery, her music teacher said she had the potential for a career in music, particularly if she chose a less popular instrument. Pivoting from more than a decade of dedicated piano studies, Nwanoku took up the double bass, a daring choice, especially given her five-foot stature and gender. After training at the Royal Academy of Music in London, she went on to a celebrated performing career. She was a founding member and principal bassist of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, a position she held for 30 years, and has played with numerous other prestigious ensembles.

Of Nigerian and Irish heritage, Nwanoku founded the Chineke! Foundation and Orchestra in 2015. Comprised of mostly Black and ethnically diverse classical musicians, its mission is “Championing change and celebrating diversity in classical music.” She is currently Professor of Historical Double Bass Studies at the Royal Academy of Music and was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2022 for her services to music and diversity.

6. Lisette Oropesa

American opera singer Lisette Oropesa (b. 1983) is probably the only person to be featured in both Opera News and Runner’s World magazines. The internationally renowned soprano began running in 2011 and has since logged a dozen half-marathons and six full marathons, including the Pittsburgh Marathon the morning after starring in a production of Donizetti’s La Fille du Regiment in May 2015.

Oropesa was not athletic as a child. She told Runner’s World in 2013, “I played the flute for many years, and band camp was my level of fitness.” When she joined the Metropolitan Opera’s young artist program, she was encouraged to lose weight to further her career. While this incident reflects systemic issues within the opera industry regarding body-shaming, Oropesa was able to find a new passion: running.

At first, Oropesa could not run a mile without stopping. But she built up her mileage slowly, and pretty soon she was signing up for races. She credits running with improving her vocal stamina and breath control. Describing it as a meditative practice, she says running has also taught her how to dig deep and build mental toughness, which has helped her cope with the ups and downs of an operatic career.

Though her increased performance schedule in recent years has required her to pull back on the mileage, she says she still likes to run at least three miles before each show—something she can do wherever she happens to be in the world.

7. Luciano Pavarotti

Like most Italian boys, operatic tenor Luciano Pavarotti (1935–2007) had aspirations of becoming a soccer star. The lifelong Juventus fan decided he wanted to be a goalkeeper as a teenager. He played for the junior team of his hometown club, Modena F.C., but failed to impress when he tried out for the senior squad and they stuck him out on the wing. So, his mother encouraged him to pursue a more realistic career. He trained as a teacher and taught elementary school physical education for two years before his singing career took off in the early 1960s.

Little did he know that he would become a symbol of Italian soccer later in life. Already a superstar in the opera world, the golden-throated singer became an international household name during the 1990 World Cup when the BBC used Pavarotti’s recording of “Nessun dorma” from Puccini’s Turandot as the theme music. Though he never took to the pitch as a professional player, his voice became synonymous with the sport he so loved.