Artist Profile: Brian Maccalla

Brittany Barber
Reporter
@BarberCourant

As a child, senior Brian Maccalla was always surrounded by music. “Growing up in the city of Hamden, rap and hip-hop dominated the culture there, so that’s what I was raised on,” Brian said. Although music to Brian started as listening to a song on the radio, it has now become a more meaningful subject in his life as he releases his album, The Secret Life of Beez.

Four years ago, Brian came to New Canaan High School through the ABC program, with the interest of creating music. Although Brian had experience of his own, his music career officially took off with the help of Harry Connick Jr as a mentor. “I’ve gotten to work with Harry Connick since my freshmen year on a lot of different projects,” he said. “He actually got me more involved with music form and he helped me understand what I was doing.”

While discovering more about music with Mr. Connick, Brian found the high school courses to be particularly helpful as well. “I have been taking music technology since freshman year which is more of an audio and engineering class, so that is where I got interested in the producing aspect,” he said.

Ms. Moody helps Brian coordinate the overlapping of his beats in the music tech classroom.

In addition to creating music, Brian feels as though it is important to know the history of the music he performs. “I also took AP music theory my junior year, which helped with my understanding of the actual form of music and the different areas of time dating back to the 1600s,” Brian said.

Since then, he has taken the knowledge he has acquired, and began to apply it to his personal passion in this subject. Brian believes that music is a way people can connect with the world, no matter what genre you like. “Music is something that I feel everybody should appreciate, as it surrounds all aspects of our everyday life,” he said.

Besides the mentorship of Mr. Connick, music tech teacher Anna Moody has been a big influence on his career. Ms. Moody has worked with Brian since his freshman year, and has seen his improvement as a musician. “He started off in tech 1, and did very well,” she said. “He had a really good sense of rhythm and harmony, which is important to have.”

Ms. Moody stated that Brian is one of the few students she has seen pursue this kind of career. In her eyes, Brian got more out of the experience than just taking the class for a school requirement. “I don’t think he had too much interest in pursuing music his freshmen year,” she said. “He first took this class because it is a popular class and other kids took it, but he discovered that he actually had some talent during this time.”

Alongside Ms. Moody and Mr. Connick, Brian’s friends have inspired him to produce and upload music of his own. “The name Beez started my freshmen year,” he said. “It was created by my friends with no reason behind it and now has become part of my album, The Secret Life of Beez.” However, it wasn’t until his junior year that his album officially took off. “Right now I only have four songs and it’s supposed to be 8 or 9 songs so it’s almost halfway done,” he said.

Brian shares that the process to create music is rather simple. “To put a song together it takes all of 45 minutes. I make the beat first which takes about a day, then actually writing lyrics and recording takes less than an hour.”

With this, Brian is working on adding to his album. “I am starting another song right now, which should be done in the spring of 2016,” he said. “It’s going to take a while because I am working with one other person to create a music video for it.”

Brian feels as though his album is just a pastime avocation right now, as he does not count on it for his future. “I just add to the Secret Life of Beez as a hobby, and eventually it may evolve into something else. I decided that since I make beats and write lyrics I should make a mix tape kind of thing, with a bunch of songs,” he said.

Brian uses a piano instead of a letter keyboard to create new beats for his album “The Secret Life of Beez.”

As Brian continues to grow as a musician in his last few months at NCHS, he hopes his skill will follow him to college. “I plan to minor in music, but it depends where I go; I’m interested in Belmont in Nashville because it is strictly a music school. So if I went there I would major in music business or audio engineering,” he said.

However, he is also aware of the downfalls of a career like this. “It’s tough to make a career out of music because it starts with composers, and they don’t really make a lot of money,” Brian said. “Only some make enough to be satisfied, so, I see it more so as a hobby rather than an occupation after college.”

No matter where music will take Brian in his future, it is not something he is dependent on for a career. Music is simply an aspect of his life that he is proud of. Where music is such a versatile subject, he is glad it has become something so dominant in his life, and he hopes it will always be present for the better. “My biggest fear is that music evolves into something that becomes too popular. In the sense that artists are not idolized as positive role models but negative ones. I feel that artists should make music from the soul and express their true thoughts and feelings,” he said.

Music to Brian is something that could be misinterpreted for something it is not, when it’s purpose is to touch and inspire everyone in a different way. “The fact of the matter is, everybody is going to have a different taste, and that’s okay,” Brian said. “But the most important thing as a listener is to appreciate.”