September 17, 2022 - A New Era - Creating Family
There was a major team overhaul in the Fall of 2022. Although Javier remained our Board Chair, our Leadership team was completely new.
The Board had some questions around losing some of our connections as the team reshaped itself, but it turns out, it didn't matter. The guest mentors were all still available. Our partnerships with ASMAC and the Classical Sax Project were still intact.
What was also an interesting comment from our repeat guest mentors was that we had completely shifted, and it was much more jovial and fun to join us on Zoom.
I take responsibility as the President of the organization. We went down a rabbit hole. We somehow had stopped being interested in catering to all students. We didn't understand what our goals were. I know a lot of musicians have egos, but we have to leave them at the door as music educators. And fundamentally, you have to care about and nurture everyone involved and not leave anyone behind, because that's how I want to live my life. We were pivoting back that way, and I know not everyone was game.
Fall 2022 started with mentors Eiko and Austin. Both of them incidentally are some of the nicest people I've ever met. There was no ego and none of the cra-cra that had been stressing a lot of us out for the last couple of years.
Incidentally, our first guest mentor of the new cohort was Jonathan Allentoff whom we had met in the summer at an ASMAC fundraising event. If you know Jonathan, you will understand this. Take the happiest person you know and multiply by 100. I challenge you to go out with Jon and Austin together and try not to laugh while they giddily run around together like a couple of playful Pomeranians (less the fur). Jon would soon join our Board and become a mainstay of Saturdays.
Although I will talk about this ahead, there was another HUGE piece of our Saturday programming. Justin Lee had started to deliver music history seminars during Ear Training back in the spring. For Fall, we moved him to the composition class, and it took off. He explored every music period through different composers and different pieces. These lectures are so well researched and delivered (except for Justin linking every talk to Mahler) that we considered them college level delivery. He was usually on in the first hour, and when a guest mentor happened to join us early, they could not believe what we were presenting. Justin was sixteen when he conceived of this program. Two years later, he's off to Stanford.
There were a lot of familiar faces throughout the season. New mentors included Carl Verheyen, Richard Niles, and Rebecca Schlappich. Superior, superior, superior. Had we ever had a strong guitar mentor? Not like this. Richard Niles had just completed a book on jazz composition and journeyed us through it. And Rebecca Schlappich soared with an immense lecture on string techniques and orchestration.
(I had gone to school from Kindergarten to 12th grade with Rebecca's sister-in-law, Danielle. And my sister had gone to school with Dani's younger brother, Rebecca's husband, Oliver, who incidentally is Ben Harper's drummer).
All three mentors were next level, but that did not take away from any of the returning guests including Brad Dutz, Kevork Andonian, MB Gordy, Ashley Jarmack, Hee Jin Yoon, Igor Kogan, Emer Kinsella, Genevieve Vincent, and the always amazing June Kuramoto.
Kristine Llanderal also became our new clarinet mentor. I know we had a great one. But Kristine was Austin's girlfriend, and Austin was now Vice President of Inception. Also, there is something to be said about completely infectious personalities, and Austin and Kristine as a mentoring duo could engage students for months straight if they had to.
We also ran a jazz workshop in March of 2023. Several of the kids were working on jazz numbers, and the mentoring team began to feel that we needed to give them an opportunity to hear how these pieces sounded on live instruments with brilliant improvisors who would fill in the slashes.
Multiple composers came to Los Angeles from out of town including Kestrel, Cedrus, and Luke. The Lee kids participated via zoom. Austin rocked the trumpet and contracted some of his UCLA friends, while we supplemented with some notable jazz musicians.
Although this would end up being the only live performance we officially did from Fall 2022 - Spring 2023, Austin coordinated several UCLA ensembles to record Luke's pieces for his college applications in August. And Jonathan conducted Luke's chart, "Claymore" at Milton's band, Flight 584, big band night.
I was afraid when this cohort began. Afraid and scattered because of the team overhaul. But out of chaos sometimes arises something greater than you could imagine.
You could really feel the lack of a cohesive curriculum which usually ran in the order of the instruments of the orchestra. However, something happened between Austin, Jonathan, Eiko (and in the next year, Tommy). There was some funny bond. There was this crazy level of trust and respect. As we worked together, we became family.
It is no secret. Usually I stay at arm's length from other mentors and really consider them acquaintances and colleagues. But this ran deep. It was the first time since 2020 that I could trust my team to execute and treat everyone with respect and nurturing.
We say the kids grow exponentially. But for the first time there were really multiple brains on the mentoring -- collective, collaborating brains. We put forward more creative ideas than any other Inception Leadership Team had done. And the kids music would (for the most part) benefit from it. We grew.
It speaks volumes that we have a consistent team as we moved into 2023-2024 and even beyond (though Eiko left for personal reasons in early 2024.) But it was undeniable that we had become family.
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