Last weekend, Moorpark College Music Technology students teamed up to deliver two back-to-back “Come Together” performances in the PAC Studio Theater on April 12-13.
The biannual event, organized by Moorpark College Performing Arts Department Chair Nathan Bowen, showcases the music scene of students enrolled in the Pop Music Ensemble course. Through self-formed bands and hand-selected songs, audiences traveled genre-to-genre with dynamic rock, metal, pop, country and electronic performances.
In the weeks leading up to the shows, the program took their advertising to the next level with a series of sneak peek performances at school-wide events and exclusive social media previews, allowing the program to achieve their first-ever sold-out performance on April 12.
Head social media coordinator for MCMT, second-year applied voice music major Maiya Mendoza, spoke about the practices they have taken to attract a network of attendees.
“I’m on social media a lot, so I see a lot of different trends, and I think what I was focusing on the most was showing the personalities of the people in the class,” Mendoza said. “I think that’s what gets people to engage, and it’s just really saying that these people are having fun and you want to be in an environment where they’re having fun.”
Audience interaction is a huge component of “Come Together,” as the student performers value clapping and grooving in response to their set as feedback. Attendees were encouraged to get up out of their seats and join the Studio Theater dance floor.
The group channeled this interactivity for Saturday night’s group performance of “I Wanna Be A Cowboy, Baby!” by CMAT, which featured the full band ensemble and performers who taught an accompanying dance and passed out cowboy hats.
Balancing group pieces for two different setlists gave students a deeper perspective into the live performance industry. Summer Jones, a first-year music student, performed in over 10 songs for Friday and Saturday’s sets and described the rehearsal process for the showcase.
“We’ve had a lot of rehearsal time, about an entire semester of class, and also my friends and I rehearsed outside of class so it hasn’t been too overwhelming,” Jones said. “It’s nice being in such a tight-knit group where we all support each other and can play off what everyone else in the group is doing.”
In addition to playing her original song, “Eternity,” and performing vocals and guitar with different bands, Jones took on the difficult challenge of singing “Viernes” by El Trío De Omar Rodríguez-Lopez in Spanish.
“I don’t speak Spanish and I’m singing in Spanish for that song, and that one’s got an interesting rhythm for the guitar too,” Jones said. “It’s cool having this show to experiment with different types of music that you might not normally be playing because there’s so many different music tastes coming in.”
“Come Together” also allows student singer-songwriters to share their work produced within the MCMT Songwriting Certificate of Achievement program.
Gwen Lewin, a third-year environmental science major, explained the process of writing the original song, “Yellow Wallpaper” in the program’s “Songwriting” course.
“We had different prompts every week, but it was very freeform depending on what we each wanted to do as individual students,” Lewin described. “For this one, we drew just like an abstract drawing and then we wrote lyrics based off of how we felt about the drawing.”
This collaborative group setting allowed Lewin to achieve a fuller sound for the original piece by recruiting a fellow vocalist, guitarist, bassist and drummer. Lewin talked about the valuable skills learned during this process and how it’s helped them become a stronger artist.
“Learning to work with other musicians, in the setting of the band, has been the most valuable,” Lewin said.”We definitely all rely on each other to practice and to know the music, and also just as people to understand what each other are going through. So that’s been really nice.”
Students interested in joining the “Come Together” ensemble this fall semester can register for the accompanying course MUS M33 – Pop Music Ensemble now. To learn more about the Moorpark College Music Technology Program, click here.
