March 21 - July 11, 2020 - Shut Down and the Seventeen Month Cohort
March 21, 2020 - Kick-Off, Cohort 3
Everyone thought the shut down was going to last 2 or 3 months. We were locked in our houses (or for me, a crammed one bedroom with furniture left over from college). A lot of the new students were home schooled anyway.
We had this crazy advantage during the pandemic. We had taught private lessons in 2019 on Zoom, so we were able to port to virtual immediately while other nonprofits were scrambling, trying to figure out what to do. Also, musicians were all completely out of work, so we met many whom we would never have crossed paths with in real life. Also, there were no studio costs during the pandemic.
Ruby Pan, who became our Board parent rep, spread the word of Inception, and so, including her son, Sean, we added Nikko, Matteo, and brother and sister, Cadence and Dante. I think all of them (who were somewhere between 10-15) were in college level classes, sometimes giving me imposter syndrome whenever we talked about anything outside of music.
Chris and Jayleen also returned.
March 21st was the first day of Cohort 3. Kevork Andonian and new-to-Inception mentor, Genevieve Vincent, joined in.
It's interesting to meet someone just as their career is about to explode. Genevieve and I were introduced to each other by Terence Young. We met for lunch just as the world was about to shut down. Her music immediately reminds you of Alexandre Desplat with her use of strings.
What a lot of driving around Los Angeles delivering food did for me, was give me the opportunity to properly plan for the beginning of our cohort.
I had a strategy. We were going to start with creativity and storytelling, and move on from there. Again, I'm sure the Asian moms were not in love with me telling their kids to play their instruments experimentally, but the young composers did.
I mean seriously, what were we supposed to do? Zoom had not figured out original sound for musicians yet, and there would always be an internet lag.
I had a cute little power point (that I kept using) which describes what is necessary in storytelling:
Beginning
Middle
Something for Lunch
End
What did I mean by Something for Lunch? I had a slide that was peppered with two shades of blue. Then when I said, "Something Unexpected," I would change one of the letters to yellow. As I revisited this slide a few times in the future, some of our students started calling out for a "Yellow U". So I unexpectedly changed it to red.
There was also an exercise about coloring outside the box, which on the power point just allowed me to scribble all over the page (since I'm a really bad artist.)
April 4, 2020 - Akira Nakano (Piano/Composer)
I met all the kids on-line and encouraged them to be creative in their compositions, Dante, Sean Matteo, Cadence, and Nikko were all willing and open. Some of them had straight-laced parents. But what were they going to do? Everyone was locked down. In the second Saturday, we explored some really disconnected improv, storytelling, and a little bit of conducting (insert laugh here.) Though I really reinforced that "down meant down".
April 18, 2020 - Preston Scales (singer/songwriter/producer)
So here was Week 3. And I had a really legit plan of storytelling. I knew nobody better to ask to come in than R&B songwriter/singer/producer, Preston Scales. Preston fast became a mentor favorite. Although nobody would guess that an R&B guy could be such a positive influence on the composers, he was such a great storyteller that he churned their imagination every time he came back. We'd see him again multiple times.
Preston was married to my friend and dance instructor, Stef. One of our mutual friends was a very conservative Republican. I could always deal with political differences. But this was the Trump era, we were in COVID, and racial accusations along with the "Stop Asian Hate" movement was in play. Our friend wrote an incredibly disparaging post about Asian people. And when Stef and I commented about how disappointed we were in his rhetoric, he doubled down on it. He was one of my closest friends, but I had to shut the door in that moment, because if there's one thing that fires me up, it's any sort of racial discrimination.
After class, which whizzed by, Preston and I had our first deep discussion about racism and seeing the world from the lens of people of color. I was grateful to have someone to dive into that.
By 2022, our friend and I did eventually talk it out at great length and have come to an understanding. In truth, I did feel the Chinese government did a horrible job, but hate speech against all Chinese and Asians didn't work.
When Trump was first elected, another friend, James, was distraught on election night. I held throughout the four years, that it was on the rest of us to not only accept people who didn't look like us or who had different beliefs, but to get to know them, engage, become friends, and have healthy debate.
In 2017. my dad had gotten sick. My neighbor in the next building was Orthodox Jewish. He was a beautiful canter and frequently gave me left over food or invited me over to learn about his traditions. When Ezra found out about my dad, it was during Sukkot. All of Ezra's neighbors and friends were Jewish, and they erected a tent in the parking lot of their apartment. Ezra invited me in to pray for my father, and for all of his friends to also pray for my father. It was one of the most generous things he could have done, and went truly with my belief of finding deeper relationships with people who are not like you, but who love just like you do.
May 2, 2020 - Genevieve Vincent (Composer)
Genevieve Vincent returned for Session Four. In addition to being a film composer, she also is a songwriter in a duo called dark-dark and was about a month away from getting her first studio feature. In 2021 she would join us on the Inception Podcast and tell us about her journey.
Click on the video below to listen to Genevieve's podcast episode.
One funny thing happened as Genevieve logged onto zoom. Most of our kids were in break-out rooms. Only one student, Nikko, was on with me waiting for them all to come back. As Genevieve said hello, I casually apologized that there was only one kid that day. Nikko played right along. You could see Genevieve's disappointment, and then all the kids popped back in. It was funny.
Genevieve was the composer on "The Lonely Hearts Club" and followed that up on the reboot of "Fantasy Island".
We also got new students today! Koa found me on lessons.com and Angela was taking clarinet with Jonathan Sacdalan at Project Harmony. He referred her over. Koa was a talented Marimba player and composer. Angela was making a great effort on the clarinet, but she could really sing! Over time, using your voice to compose became a huge part of the Inception philosophy. Months later, Angela and Sean would speak about this at our virtual conference in November. Here is a short conversation with Kate Bacich.
May 16, 2020 - Claire Morison (Engineer)
Claire Morrison, Mother of Inception, gave the most amazing lecture on working with musicians in the studio.
For all the new kids, it did not resonate. Many of them had not stepped foot into a studio. But that doesn't mean it wasn't worthwhile. Claire, more than anyone I knew, understood how to handle musicians and their personalities, and from her, I learned lots.
In other exciting new, on May 11th, I got a job at the Robert A. Fox Family Foundation. The whole application process had started at the beginning of April. Largely I was excited because I would have some floating cash for Inception.
June 6, 2020 - Javier Oviedo & Jean-Pierre Schmitt, Classical Sax Project
Happy Birthday, JP! Why would you commit to this on your birthday?
I don't tend to answer random reach-outs on Linkedin, but for whatever reason, i did. It was THE best decision I ever made for Inception.
We have enjoyed a successful partnership with the Classical Saxophone Project to date. Javier is our current Board Chair. JP was one of the directors 2021-2022. And as I write this in 2024, they hosted a collaboration between The Animation Project, Inception, and CSP, performing original compositions of our students to animations made by students in concert in New York.
Their initial session was the first time that Inception started to deliver on what the concept was supposed to be during the COVID cohort. Our students wrote compositions for sax, both in advance and live in a breakout room, and Javier recorded/played back their work. Both he and JP gave immediate, live feedback.
"Original Sound for Musicians" still was not a thing yet, but Javier did everything in his power to override that. It was truly an amazing session, and a lot of the students perked up, hearing the music on a real instrument, instead of MIDI general sounds.
BTW, Javier has the most amazing tone of any soprano saxophonist you've ever heard. If you ever have the opportunity, write specifically for him.
July 21, 2020 - Tom Hiel (Film Composer)
So now that we had an influx of new mentors, it was time to return to the past and the wonderful Tom Hiel. Tom did a true film scoring session. He brought in a clip for the students to write music for. He also had become interested in helping in the mission and made introductions to nonprofit organizations that might help us.
Tom would also appear at our vitual conference later to speak about the work her did.
Click on the video below to hear a conversation with Tom from our virtual conference.
7/11/2020 - Emer Kinsella (Violin/Composer)
I taught modes today. I feel like every time I teach modes, the students don't really know to do with them: Lydian, Phrygian, Gregorian (not quite). There are times when we take this music theory breaks. Some of the students (like Angela) really dug in. Others, you could just see it flying over their head.
This was also the session where I really began to understand the over-achievement the homeschooled students were a part of. One of them was super tired and had a small outburst of why he had to be in class on a Saturday. When I chatted with his mother, she apologized profusely, telling me that the day before he had to complete nine hours of math and the day before that, seven hours of English. Seriously, mom? Give him a Saturday off.
I don't want to be critical of tiger parents, but I had a tiger parent, and I think I had some weird goal of saving all the students from their tiger/helicopter/micro-managing parents. (I know I'm not supposed to be talking badly about them, and I'm not. I'm saying everything with the deepest amount of respect and admiration.) But seriously, GIVE YOUR KID A BREAK!
The other thing that plagued this cohort was we did not charge tuition, and parents did not want to waste the opportunity and were grateful. True. I frequently wish I had done this differently because I'd be able to have a good retirement nest egg put away by now.
Emer Kinsella returned. And I am always so inspired by her creativity and composition work, it was just great to have a conversation. She also played the kids' violin breakout room compositions. We started to call these comp gyms.
Board members Miyeko Heishi and Michael Sushel were now in the habit of being on every zoom. My phone would ring after every session, and I'd get feedback. Today, Miyeko told me the session was disengaging because I didn't involve the kids. Well, it was really fun for me talking to Emer. I guess that's not how these were supposed to work.
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