2021 Music Mentors
AEKASORA
aekasora is a first generation, Indian-American lo-fi musician and beat maker from Virginia. His music, both deeply nostalgic and magically whimsical, is inspired by artists like Nujabes and J Dilla. In producing his music, aekasora’s equipment of choice includes the Roland SP404 and the Akai MPK mini. His albums include “runaway dream”, “Simple Things”, “Lofi Series”, “Lofi Series Vol. 2”, and “autumn”. He served as a music mentor during the CAC 2020 session.
You can find aekasora’s work here.
Why do you make art?
As a hobby, I have been making music for over 8 years now. I decided to try my hand at making music after I first discovered Nujabes, who has been one of the most significant influences in both my music and personal life. It all began when I was bored after school one day, and began using a generic music production website to put together a bunch of pre-recorded samples in a way that didn't hurt my ears too much. I continued making beats and eventually got better at it. The goal is to just make tracks that people would enjoy listening to, and that some people might even be inspired by.
Who's your favorite artist, and why?
Nujabes. His use of samples and ability to incorporate jazz and other influences into the hip hop genre has had a profound effect on how I think about music.
What's the soundtrack to your life, and why?
Right now, it’s “J Dilla – Last Donut of the Night”. It sounds simple on the surface, but there are so many layers to this. If I were able to add a track next to the definition of the word “bittersweet”, this would be it.
GRACE COBERLY
Grace Coberly is a queer composer, singer, and educator with a passion for musical accessibility. They mostly compose for choir and solo vocalists, but have also been known to write for piano, percussion, and kazoo. A runner-up in the 2020 Women's Sacred Music Project Commission Competition, Grace was recently commissioned by Chicago Fringe Opera and the Latin School of Chicago. Their work has been performed across Europe and the American Midwest. They completed their undergraduate studies in music and linguistics at Haverford College, including a semester abroad in Milan during which they studied composition, conducting, and vocal performance. During the summer of 2020, they attended Temple University’s remote Young Women Composer’s Camp and two virtual choral conducting courses through the Eastman School of Music.
Grace is spending summer 2021 moving from Chicago/Philadelphia to central Massachusetts. When not doing music, they enjoy doing yoga, roasting vegetables, and wishing they had a cat.
You can find Grace’s work here.
Why do you make art, in a few words or sentences?
I make art to bring people together. I’ve always believed that the best music is a social act, requiring the active investment of as many people as possible. That’s why so much of my work is choral music. The more notes in a chord — the more voices in a room — the better.
What's your hottest artistic take?
Some of Bach’s rules of tonal harmony are like… kinda legitimate. Only some, though! There’s nothing better than a tasteful parallel octave.
What's the soundtrack to your life, and why?
“Soundtrack” is a very musical word, but because I’m a musician, let me try out some less musical answers: the color blue, Brussels sprouts, my fuzzy blanket, sitting on the floor, free books, and the sound of my partner testing out new beatboxing sounds in the shower.
Who's your favorite artist, and why?
My favorite artist is YOU!!! Thanks for being here!
MICHAEL GANCZ
Michael Gancz (b. 1999) is an Israeli-American composer, conductor, producer, trombonist, and carillonneur studying music theory and composition at Yale University, where he will receive simultaneous Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in 2022. He has studied composition with Dr. Kathryn Alexander, Dr. Konrad Kaczmarek, Ryan Lindveit and Liliya Ugay. He has studied trombone with Dan Vaitkus and Corey Sansolo, and taken special lessons with Scott Hartman. He studies carillon with Ellen Dickinson.
At Yale, Michael conducts the Davenport Pops Orchestra and organizes the annual All-Nighter Music and Arts Festival. He works as the manager of a recording studio and as a computational music analyst for the Gerstein Laboratory. He is also the musical director of Hear Your Song@Yale, a foundation that works with children in New Haven hospitals to write and professionally record personalized songs.
Gancz’s compositional impetus often derives from questions of honesty, postcoloniality, and cultural, national, interpersonal and religious identity. He collaborates frequently with poets and multimedia artists, and his works are often performed or broadcast in art spaces. His compositions have been performed by the Albatross Duo, Margaret Lancaster, the Ostravskà Banda, the Yale Symphony Orchestra, the Yale Undergraduate Chamber Orchestra, and the Yale Jazz Ensemble, among others.
Michael is available to talk about any genre and medium of music! He is very excited to meet this summer’s CAC fellows and to help bring their collaborations to life.
What's your hottest artistic take?
It’s okay to make bad art! The process of making it is infinitely more valuable than the end product.
Why do you make art, in a few words or sentences?
Composition and performance are incredibly cathartic activities; they help me understand the world around me and my place within it—and to communicate on a deep and abstract level with the people around me.
Who's your favorite artist, and why?
Too many to count, too hard to pick favorites. Been listening to gecs nonstop since 2019.
What's one thing you're looking forward to, post-COVID-19?
Conducting my orchestra again!
What was your childhood nightmare?
Chased by witches through a volcano full of boiling tomato soup.
What's the soundtrack to your life, and why?
The hook from the song I heard most recently—I am really susceptible to earworms.
ZOE LIN
A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, Zoe Lin is a rising senior studying English and cello in the Columbia-Juilliard Exchange Program. She has appeared at music festivals such as Aspen Music Festival and Kneisel Hall, performed on NPR’s From The Top, and is an alumna of the Doublestop Foundation after winning its Instrument Loan Competition in 2018.
Her first musical love will forever be chamber music, but she has also explored the industry of music through working in artist management and music tech. Over the years, through helping to grow a now non-profit in music education, co-building an online teaching platform, and coaching chamber music, she has developed a passion for arts education, tackling accessibility issues, and helping young artists question and build the worlds in which their art lives.
She loves and would love to talk classical music technique, our always changing relationship with art as artists, the inherent doom of classical music, and why becoming a better writer helped her grow as a musician.
You can find Zoe’s work here.
Who's your favorite artist, and why?
To me, this question is unanswerable because I think the way every person sees the world is incredibly unique and important, no matter how they express it. I just saw “People Come First”, The Met’s retrospective of Alice Neel’s work, though, and I really admire her effort to honestly capture her subjects in both their hardships and beauty.
Why do you make art, in a few words or sentences?
Art/music helps me make sense of things that can’t be described simply and/or literally. I also just have a lot of feelings, and they need to come out somehow.
What's one thing you're looking forward to, post-COVID-19?
Seeing the entire face of someone when they smile… or cry.
RIVA RUBIN
Riva Rubin is a recently graduated musician who plans to study music, philosophy, and linguistics at Columbia University. They are a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist who was first immersed in music at the age of 7 with classical violin. This past year she has been an active member of the SFJazz High School All Stars Big Band as a jazz vocalist. Along with voice and violin, Rubin independently studies guitar, tenor saxophone, piano, ukulele, and chromatic harmonica. She also writes her own music and composes. They can offer advising in anything pertaining to music, always offering a listening ear. Their favorite artists at the moment include Sergei Kuryokhin, Viktor Tsoi and Kino, The Pharcyde, Ofra Haza, Stan Getz, Armand Hammer, Boris Grebenshchikov, and Edot Babyy.
Why do you make art, in a few words or sentences?
I make art because I feel like an incomplete individual without this unique mode of expression. To me, the essence of being is feeling and this is how I do so.
Who's your favorite artist, and why?
One of my all time favorite artists is Sergei Kuryokhin. His insane range in music is something that I always marvel at. He was also one of the key collaborators of a couple of my other favorite artists and as far as I can observe, he was a consistent inspiration who never abided by standards or expectations. His work is very abstract, but definitely worth listening to and learning from-- I just keep studying his records.
What's the soundtrack to your life, and why?
I think if I chose one song that stood as the soundtrack to my life it would be “Tom’s Diner” by Suzanne Vega and DNA. It’s very simple but alluring, which is pretty cool I think.
CLARA SCHUBILSKE
Clara Schubilske is a senior at Northwestern University studying violin performance and social policy. She has played violin since the age of 6 and developed an interest in equity and social justice after volunteering as a music teacher through organizations such as El Sistema Minneapolis, Evanston Young Artists, and the Connecting Musical Pathways Initiative. Clara enjoyed growing up in the vibrant music scene of Minneapolis Minnesota where she studied with Professor Sally O’Reilly through the University of Minnesota. She has recently performed on a virtual chamber music series with the Minnesota Orchestra and has won awards including the Minnetonka Young Artist Award, the Zodiac Chamber Music Award, and third prize in the Illinois ASTA Concerto Competition. Although she mainly focuses on classical music, Clara has enjoyed playing in pit orchestras for musical theater productions like the dolphin show and on big band jazz records such as Bryan Eng’s debut album “20” and Cedille records’ Leo Sowerby recordings. She plans to continue her studies next fall at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
What’s your hottest artistic take?
Everyone is an artist. Sometimes when I tell people that I play violin they respond “oh I could never do that, I don’t have a musical bone in my body.” I think this is completely incorrect. Violin is just one of many skills that people can learn to express their opinions, emotions, and personality. This applies to writing and any other form of art as well. I believe that we can take a very expansive approach to what we consider art, and as long as a person can appreciate or critique anything within that broad definition, they are an artist.
Why do you make art, in a few words or sentences?
I find music to be extremely cathartic. Especially in a world that can be so frequently full of frustrations, music can be a very powerful tool for activism and expression.
What was your childhood nightmare?
I had a lot of problems with stage fright when I first started performing around the age of 7-10. I was terrified that I would forget the piece I was playing or that I would freeze up. Since then, my teachers have given me many helpful strategies for memorization and coping with performance anxiety that I would love to share (because this seems to be a fairly common issue).
To interpret the question more literally, I had a recurring nightmare as a child that I was stuck under a cracked concrete road and a boy with a large head was trampling me.
What’s the soundtrack to your life and why?
The first song that popped into my head with this question is a recording of an a capella flash mob with the cast of the broadway musical “The Lion King” singing “The Circle of Life.” I’m not sure why, but this particular video always makes my heart full with joy. I think that in some ways it epitomizes the fulfillment that can come from large group collaborations.