When Springfield High School graduate Phillip Lee Dickerson first enrolled at Delaware County Community College, he didn’t know how to read music.

Three years later, he capped his incredible transformation by being selected to perform at Carnegie Hall as part of the Philadelphia Music Teachers Association’s annual recital.

From 2007-2011, Dickerson was in the U.S. Army and, after training, became a member of the Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division. In 2010, he was deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan.

“There’s nothing else like it, and as much as I had some of the worst times in my life there, I also had some of the best,” he said.

After completing his service, Dickerson struggled to readjust to civilian life. He dusted-off his keyboard and reawakened his passion for music, which he developed when he was 13 and his mother bought a piano from a thrift shop.

“I realized that if I didn’t return to piano right then and there, I would let go of the potential opportunity that I still had to become the greatest pianist my talents would allow me to become,” he said.

Dickerson, a Respiratory Therapy major, then enrolled at DCCC in January 2013, and took courses in musical composition.

He performed at several campus events. To secure a spot in the Carnegie Hall recital, though, Dickerson was one of more than 400 musicians who had to audition in front of a panel of judges.

“I couldn’t get a read on their reaction to my performance,” he said. “We were judged and graded according to age, musicality, accuracy, fluency, and I feared that because I’ve only been playing for a short time in comparison to most other aspiring classical musicians my age, that I wouldn’t quite make the cut.”

He did, and was one of 25 to play the esteemed stage at Carnegie Hall. He performed Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C#minor, Op.3 No.2.

“The performance was the perfect, once-in-a-lifetime occasion to demonstrate my love of music in a place where many an incredible musician has performed before me, from Nina Simone to Lang Lang to Sergei Rachmaninoff himself,” Dickerson said. “It’s just amazing to me that this is just another step in my musical journey.”