Three solo musicians, Nick Valentini, Lashon Halley and Natalie Brainin, share their personal stories through music and how they feel about competing in Spring Sing 2015.
Category Archives: Music
Spring Sing 2015: Lashon Halley
Lashon Halley found out she was performing at Spring Sing, called her friend Xiomara Fambrough and said, “Yo Xi, I got in with the song I wrote for you.” A year ago, Halley wrote the song “Done with You” for Fambrough, who was having problems with her boyfriend. “She didn’t (write) it for her own […]
Spring Sing 2015: Nick Valentini
With three Spring Sings already under his belt and a UCLA degree imminent, fourth-year cognitive science student Nick Valentini is in the midst of working towards the future. But Valentini said his life is all about the present and a bit about the past. “You listen to my first Spring Sing and I’m rapping in […]
Spring Sing 2015: Natalie Brainin
Natalie Brainin said she knew from her first year at UCLA that she wanted to perform as a soloist in Spring Sing. The third-year ethnomusicology student and singer-songwriter performed in last year’s Spring Sing as part of two different production groups – her sorority, Delta Gamma, and Resonance A Capella. But this time, Brainin will […]
Avartan Music Festival to bring together Indian classical performers
From center stage of Schoenberg Hall emanates a voice which holds a calming, single note, then glides through a musical scale before returning back. The singer, UCLA alumna Gaayatri Kaundinya, sits cross-legged on the stage leading the performance. By her side sits her accompanist, who follows her every note with his violin only a split […]
Musical sounds from the Middle East to feature at Fowler
The delicate strings of the setar take a lifetime to master, said Farzad Amoozegar. For the UCLA anthropology and ethnomusicology graduate student, his studies began when he was 6 years old and his grandfather introduced him to the instrument, but really took off when he began studying under Persian classical master Mohammad-Reza Lotfi in Berkeley. […]
Album Review: ‘Wilder Mind’
Mumford and Sons have ditched the banjos. It’s a bold move and a drastic departure from its former sound, a transition that may be polarizing to the band’s devoted fans. Mumford and Sons’ third studio album, “Wilder Minds,” is the British band’s attempt at artistic growth, replacing its Americana-inspired mask with an attempt to find […]