Former winner inspired by Spring Sing experience for music career

The deadline for Spring Sing 2011 entries was fast approaching, but Courtney Randall still hadn’t finished composing her song. Randall, then a first-year student, tried to rhyme lyrics and fit them over a guitar melody in her dorm room and in the middle of monotonous lectures. She had procrastinated on her Spring Sing entry, and […]

Hip-hop musical confronts gang violence and racism

Brandon Rainey attended three funerals last summer. Two of his former students and a brother of one of his students had been shot and killed during the 100 days and 100 nights of violence declared by two feuding gangs in South Los Angeles in late summer of 2015. They had been shot standing in front […]