December 1, 2018 - Tommy Can You Hear Me?
When I was working odd-numbered day job number 2 (the one with the 4 star rating), the building manager, Rosie, one day told me I had to meet her husband. She reiterated this multiple times.
We had casually discussed Inception, and she mentioned he was a music director and producer.
As I was getting ready to leave said job, I finally followed up.
Tommy turns out to be Tommy Faragher. The music directing he had recently done was the Warbler’s first song on “Glee”, and he had produced Celine Dion, Josh Groban, Kelly Clarkson, and Al Green, to name just a few.
Much like June Kuramoto, my meeting with Tommy was all about music... more specifically about orchestration: starting with ways to use the cello, onto how it blends with the clarinets, and thoughts around the French Horn.
Were we going to bring this to our kids?
Yes.
Right off the bat he had indicated he was in.
Tommy showed up for the second half of our pilot program. Our composers had had two weeks to revise their compositions. Now it was time to be mentored by, well, you read the partial list of super stars Tommy has worked with.
Original mentor Molina and I sat in and bolstered performances of our students, and Tommy frequently improvised along on the keyboard for a final play-thru of the kids songs.
“Don’t worry about the mistakes,” Tommy told them. “They often lead to the best bits.”
Those kids took this seriously. There were vast improvements between the first session and this one. Jayleen took all of June’s words to heart and exploded. She began playing the new iteration of her piece, and everyone’s mouths dropped open.
All five kids improvised with the mentors n a version of “Twinkle Twinkle” for a full circle moment for me.
I’m really sure not every kid read Tommy’s bio this round, and most of them had no real idea who they were working with, but the adults knew. There is much more to say about Tommy ahead.
The videotaped Inception pilot would serve as an excellent proof of concept going forward.
Click on the video below for our initial marketing pitch video.
As the program was building out, and the search for the music educator to lead it was still on, it was Claire Morison who blunted said, "Stop looking. You're qualified. Do it."
That did not go as intended, but it has been incredibly rewarding.
Click on the video below to see a mentoring session with Jaime, Tommy, and myself.
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