The Notes on Stuyvesant’s Musicians

Cosmo Coen

“As a musician, you need to love yourself.” — Cosmo Coen, senior

Senior Cosmo Coen has been playing music for 14 years. Directing music in theater productions and performing for Stuyvesant Outlet Showcase, Coen is an absolute music prodigy. According to Coen, music has been in his life for as long as he can remember. He fell in love with music when his teacher at the time gave him his first challenging piece. “I was around seven or eight, and I couldn’t stop talking about it on the way home,” Coen said. A woman on the street overheard and introduced Coen to his current music teacher. “I then switched [teachers] and I was so so so so so happy,” he said. “And that's when I realized that this is what I want to do.”

Coen’s current teacher also encouraged Coen to apply for the well-known Manhattan School of Music. This year will be his ninth and final year attending. Coen’s musical activities often overlap with his academics, and that has become one of the biggest obstacles in his musical career. “Balancing time is so hard, and you constantly have to remind yourself [of] what you're working for. You just get so caught up in the workload and forget that you actually have to practice to get anywhere. But it's really all worth it,” he explained. In the future, Coen plans on majoring in music to some capacity in college.

To aspiring musicians, he advised, “Persevere. Always. And if you don't love it with all of your heart, why bother?”

Alisha Heng

Junior Alisha Heng is both a musician and a young composer. Her musical career started with the piano. She switched to the clarinet four years ago, after falling in love with its sound. Heng has written a piano concerto, as well as other pieces of original music, which she shares on SoundCloud. Her first original piece took six months to finish; Heng has high standards for her music, as she explains that she does not consider a piece to be 100 percent complete until she feels that it is perfect.

Her experience with music has not always been so smooth sailing. “I experienced two really terrible periods of burnout last school year, which really pushed and terrified me because I had never experienced that before. It occurred to me in relatively close periods of time and I was scared that I wouldn't be able to enjoy music again, but it worked out thanks to the support I received from a few people,” she said.

In the future, Heng hopes to study in a conservatory, but for now, she just wants to enjoy music. “I just want to see where life takes me,” she said.

Joshua Kim

Like many other Asian-Americans, junior Joshua Kim was enrolled in piano lessons at a young age. As time passed, he wanted to try something new, so he decided to switch to the clarinet. His love for music led him to learn how to play various instruments on his own. In addition to the piano that he has played for eight years and the clarinet for four, Kim knows how to play the electric guitar, bass guitar, and drums.

Kim has been a member of the SophFrosh SING! band for two years, as a clarinetist in 2018, and as a director and conductor in 2019. Though he really enjoyed the experience of directing SING! band, he admits that it was not easy. “People with different musical backgrounds, styles, and skills are coming together to [form] one piece, one harmony,” he explained. The challenge is more of figuring out how to deliver musical expression rather than the technical aspects of music. In addition to SING!, Kim is also a member of the All-City Honors Band, Stuyvesant Theater Community Band, and a chamber group.

Kim is interested in composing his own music, but school and other extracurricular activities take up the majority of his time. Though he is a busy junior, he always finds time to practice music. “I stay up late. Depending on the homework, [I sleep] around 2 [a.m.],” Kim said. “I spend like an hour after school practicing.”

Aidan Ng

“As a musician, I think it’s important to branch out to different things because you don’t know what you love before you start doing it.” —Aidan Ng, junior

Junior Aidan Ng realized his interest in music when he was three years old, after discovering the melodies he could play on the piano. Ng’s music repertoire began to take shape after creating his first original music piece in the fifth grade. His inspirations for composing are “usually just a feeling or mood,” he said.

As or his music preferences, “I don't really have a favorite music piece, partly because there's so much good stuff out there and depending on how you're feeling one day, what song you want to listen to will change,” Ng commented. When it comes to genres, Ng prefers pieces with “soft piano music with voice or electronic dance music, because I can really appreciate the amount of work that gets put into making those pieces,” he said.

In the eighth grade, Ng decided to start a YouTube channel. Though he admitted that it initially was a way to share music with friends, the channel eventually became Ng’s platform for his musical career. He found it easier to “develop connections and [his] identity as a composer,” he said.

One of his biggest challenges as a musician and composer is balancing his studies with his passion for music. “Schoolwork is just so much sometimes, and in order to remedy that, I try to be a part of as [many] music-related activities in Stuy[vesant] as possible to kind of force [myself] to get exposed to music constantly in my life,” Ng explained. “In the end, I think it's just the same way you'd balance schoolwork and any other extracurricular—you just have to manage your time.” While Ng acknowledges his diminishing amounts of free time, his love for music lives on. “I have a lot less time to make music now, but I still try to work on something every month or so, especially on long weekends or days where I just have a lot less homework,” he said.

Ng advises aspiring musicians to reach out of their comfort zones. “You never know where your music will lead you, and staying open to possibilities has helped me find my identity as a composer,” he stated. “As a musician, I think it's important to branch out to different things because you don't know what you love before you start loving it.”

Cecilia Bachana

“My songs stem from my thoughts and feelings, and it's all very sincere.” –Cecilia Bachana, senior

Senior Cecilia Bachana has always been surrounded by music. Bachana started playing piano at the age of five; as the years went by, her love for music grew deeper as she learned the bass guitar and more rock/alternative music. In eighth grade, Bachana began to write her first songs. "I wrote the lyrics to my first song in five minutes while I was overwhelmed by emotions regarding something that had been happening with a friend. There was no going back," Bachana recalled.

The roots of her songs are her experiences and emotions. She describes the outside world, from newspaper headlines to conversations with a stranger, as her inspiration. "My songs stem from my thoughts and feelings, and it's all very sincere," she said.

Bachana also experiences the frustrations that come with comparison. "I constantly compare my progress, my music, and my choices to other people, even those of my musician friends," she said. "The hardest thing for me is to remind myself that everyone's path is different, that one songwriter friend might be getting really popular […] another seems to be doing photo shoots and selling actual albums on iTunes already […] but that as long as I'm working hard and I want it as badly as I do, following that desire and that passion any way it takes me is totally valid." Bachana emphasizes that her path does not necessarily need to follow a strict model. “What's important is that I'm taking the route that works for me and is natural for me," she said.

Bachana admits that balancing her school and music schedules are difficult. "I barely balance them. Last year I never really practiced," she noted. "But this year, I'm aiming to commit to [music] more, so I have a schedule for my music Instagram that forces me to make time for writing."