Point Five and the Leadership Team
May 2020 had five Saturdays. Two months in, and we were uncovering the disparities in music acumen among the kids.
We had been numbering the sessions. Claire's was 5. Classical Saxophone Project, 6, and so on. Thus on May 30th, 2020, the point-five sessions were formed... and more importantly, the "Comp Gym".
We had been seeing success in the breakout rooms with mini team composition projects. But for once, we wanted to spend the entire group session composing a piece with mentor feedback.
.5's were optional, but many of the students would make it in depending on the topic.
6.5 and 7.5 were identical music theory classes with half the class joining one Saturday, and the other half the next.
During Emer's Session 8, the Inception delivery model started to change... drastically.
Our cello playing composer, Matteo, bumped into his cousin's best friend at the beach. Amy "Aizhou" (pronounced I-Joe) Liu had just moved to town after graduating from the Berklee College of Music. She was a composer and songwriter. One of the pieces on her reel was a fantastic orchestral piece.
We got on Zoom just to network. But it spun into something different. I proposed she come work with us. Of course, we were sometimes paying our guest featured mentors, but I was "paying to volunteer", and there was no budget for additional staff. Would she join as a volunteer? It could help grow her network. The answer was yes.
I soon after met with her best friend, Blythe, who had black and pink hair. Blythe specialized in the business of music and was also a singer songwriter. Same question, would you come to volunteer?
Since I didn't have money to pay, I offered titles which would look great on the resume. Because Amy came in first, she was made Vice President, and Blythe VP of Strategy (or something I can't remember in 2024).
They joined Inception during Session 8, and we began the tradition of getting comments from the entire panel on the students' compositions. We still do this today, and bonus, we've gotten way better at it.
I was addicted to the show "Songland" where three super star music producers, Ester Dean, Shane McAnally, and Ryan Tedder, were part of a panel that helped a superstar singer, i.e. John Legend, Her, the Jonas Brothers, or Meghan Trainor (to name a few) pick, mentor, and produce versions of original songs presented by aspiring songwriters. The winner would have their song recorded by the star singer. I'd always wanted Inception to mirror "Songland" in some way, and this was the beginning.
8.5 - Film Scoring Comp Gym
On July 18th, we had another comp gym with no guest mentors. We worked on scoring clips from "E.T." and "Jurassic Park". It was the first time we got to see Amy and Blythe mentor and compose. They would go on to become a very huge part of our growth, as you will read about.
The stand-out thing about this session: I learned to use Mentimeter, which takes participants' live feedback and turns their ideas into a word cloud. I thought it was really cool and realized I was just asking dumb questions to see it work.
UCLA
Amy and I had taken a meeting with Dr. Frank Heuser. Our Board member Megan Lubaszka, who is frequently asked onto panels to speak about virtual reality, was invited to speak on the education panel at Digital Hollywood. Very kindly, she punted it to me. It went really well. From there, I met someone in the nonprofit finance workshop who introduced me to Dr. Gigi Johnson, the head of the UCLA Innovation Center for the School of Music.
Since meeting, Gigi has hosted me on two different podcasts, her most recent one called "Creative Innovators". You can listen to my episode below if you're so inclined.
It was on this podcast that I discovered that I have a legit stutter.
Gigi also asked me to join her on a panel at SXSU EDU which included Dr. Frank Heuser, a composition instructor at UCLA.
I call him Frank, but I soon found out his students could not call him anything other than "Dr. Heuser".
Soon after another dreaded Zoom, Frank had referred two composition/education majors to us as potential mentors.
Jack Aron specialized in digital composition. Kate Bacich was an extremely talented film composer who taught. Over the next few sessions, they too joined Inception. We went from a regular staff of one to an all-volunteer staff of five.
Here is Jack on the Inception Podcast discussing why he joined the journey.
Session 11.5 was a group mentor composition session and saw Karen Elaine join us on full-time volunteer staff.
And Session 12.5 was led by the team, and was all about creating music with a DAW (digital audio workstation). The team led the fun session which many of the kids loved.
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