May 18, 2019 - Two for One - Tom Hiel (Composer) & Terence Young (Electric Cello)
I met Terence Young at Gensler, one of the other architecture firms I day job'ed at. He's an incredibly successful airport architect. (I haven't seen LAX in his portfolio, so you don't have to blame him for the screwed up traffic there.)
He also plays the electric cello.
The great thing when you are trying to build something is that often worth more than a monetary donation, is an introduction.
I forget how it went exactly, but Terence emailed me one day and introduced me to film & television composer, Tom Hiel.
I was little bit star struck. Tom had scored "Swimming with Sharks" and one of my all time favorite TV shows, "The Practice".
So Tom and Terence mentored together.
This time, Jayleen was out, but joined on zoom, and Luis was running late. What a crazy waste of time for the first fifteen minutes to have two mentors just sitting around.
Not really.
I had never heard either one of these guys play, and they took the opening to improvise with each other. This would be great later as they would again pair for the concert pre-show, but by that time, after hearing them, I had lots of confidence in how it would go.
Terence's playing is haunting and melodic. Tom understands harmonies and counter melodies like nobody's business. His fingers glide over the keys with such incredible ease and invitation.
Additionally, since Tom knows film scoring, he was able to move their music in different directions with story.
When Luis finally showed up, Terence almost served as a host interviewing Tom. They talked about film scoring, experimentation, and music theory.
Here is a bit of their conversation.
"It's not about playing difficult music. You want to find your own music and sometimes that is broken down in to simple melodies."
Luis fully used the opportunity well. He is still one of the most inquisitive kids, and really took the time to ask thoughtful questions and advice. All three improvised and worked on Luis' composition.
Luis also started on his conducting journey officially at this session.
It happened to be my mom's birthday, and she and my sister were teaching a washi jewelry making class at the Japanese National Museum in Little Tokyo. I brought her a cake from Cafe Dulce. We have not held an in-person event to this day without a box of donuts from James Choi at Dulce. I would have reclaimed so much time in my life without having to add time in to buy donuts for everyone every week. (James donated a majority of them.)
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