Classical composer and UCLA student Yoni Fogelman sits down with Podcasts contributor Olivia Miller to discuss his work and advice for UCLA students.

Olivia Miller: My name is Olivia Miller and I am a podcast contributor at the Daily Bruin. From a young age singing in choirs, Yoni Fogelman cultivated a deep love for melodies that would eventually inspire him to compose his own music. His passion for vocal writing bloomed into a pursuit of instrumental compositions across genres, developing his expansive musical palette. At the spry age of 21, he has already released a debut classical album, won American Society of Music Arrangers and Composers’ Jazz Music Big Band Arranging Composition award, and assisted on film scores. Recently, his single, “The Absent King” dropped, and can be heard across various streaming platforms. Yoni Fogelman, thank you so much for joining me and welcome to the show.

Yoni Fogelman: Thank you so much for having me.

OM: So from the beginning, how were you exposed to music and how did this lead you to where you are now?

YF: That’s a great question. Definitely way before coming to UCLA. I grew up with music all around the house. Definitely some early memories of hearing CDs that my dad made me going to bed, listening to old Beatles records, going to bed at my grandparents house. Even some, religious songs, prayer songs, I’m Jewish. So listening to prayer songs at temple when I was really little. I lucked out. I grew up in Los Angeles. And I lucked out that we had great music programs in the public schools, especially choir. So all throughout middle school, high school, I was in choir, and I took piano lessons in middle school. And that just got me more and more interested in music. And luckily, I had a really supportive family and teacher who encouraged me not only to perform music, but also to start writing my own.

OM: So what age did you start choir and piano?

YF: Going into sixth grade, the summer before going in sixth grade, I met a guy who showed me some cool things on the piano and he really got me excited to learn. So, once I got into middle school, I started piano and that same year found out about the choir at our middle school and started singing in the all-boys choir where I was a boy soprano.

OM: That’s awesome. So now you have amazing songs released we got “Absent King.” How was that like for you? How long did it take to make it and what was it like working with your girlfriend?

YF: Good question. The hard hitters. Okay, so fast forward, I ended up getting really into music composition, and writing music for all different kinds of genres, more like classical music, some more jazz oriented or pop oriented film scores, just kind of everything. And I very, very long story short, I ended up transferring here to UCLA. I transferred last year, so I’m now a second year transfer. But, right before I came to UCLA, I wrote this song called “Absent King.” And my girlfriend, Grace, who is a senior at USC, a very, very talented composer and music producer, she encouraged me to finish it. I ended up finishing it and then we had these like, kind of big ambitious ideas because the song I wrote has like a big choir and like all these strings in it and stuff. And I, I had like a vision that it’d be so cool to put this together with student musicians. And luckily one of the amazing things about UCLA. So a lot of people don’t know this too, especially people outside the music school, but we have a beautiful recording studio in the music building. Once I got to UCLA I gradually started thinking about how to put the song together and actually gather students and turn it into a real thing. So that was that’s like the very beginning of that whole story. But working with Grace was fun. It was stressful at times. But I actually, the fact that we were able to do it and still be dating is a testament to the strength of our relationship I think.

OM: That’s so cool. So you’re here at UCLA? How is the music program here? And what exactly is your major? And yeah, I just want to hear about that.

YF: Okay, I love the UCLA music program. I have so many good things to say about it, total poster child, happily, because it’s a pretty amazing school. And I’m, like, usually, I would be critical of it. But really, I just have so few critical things to say like, you know, there’s the, like bureaucracy and you know, difficulties with organizing or scheduling to anyone experiences, but you’d experience that anywhere.

OM: Yeah.

YF: The overwhelming positivity is the stellar faculty we have, across the different majors, the recordings here that I already mentioned, the music library, which is a cool study place for a lot of people, especially like North Campus folks, I see a lot of people kind of like head in there, to study which is amazing. It’s a whole library full of sheet music, and music, biographies, you know, going back like thousands of years, it’s crazy.

OM: Where is that? Is that…

YF: So it’s in the music building, it’s in Schoenberg. It’s has like a big kind of glass window. It’s right by Dickson Court. So not far from Kaplan. But my exact major is music composition. So like day to day, that mostly looks like reading music for instruments of the orchestra, or for choir. And of any kind of size, like it can be a string quartet, it could be a full orchestra piece, you know, pieces for the choirs for the jazz bands. But as a collection, a lot of that’s known as chamber music. When you take you know, you write a piece for just a few instruments, it’s sort of like the classical music version of a band.

OM: So who are your mentors in the music program?

YF: Good question, I mean, the, probably like, strongest mentorships are the composition faculty, the two co-chairs, Richard Danielpour, and Ian Krause are both incredible composers, and very, very dedicated to their students. They are, they’ve been very generous with me and with my peers. They…wait…so essentially, we have weekly music lessons with them. And whenever I try to explain this to non-music majors, it’s sort of like going to your English teachers office hours, you come in with an essay you’re working on or a paper and your English teacher who you know, has written larger papers before and has has this lifetime of experience, looks at your paper and makes observations about the argument, and the strength of your argument, about the syntax, about the flow, about the voice, you know, the grammar, all those kinds of things. And all of those have musical equivalents. Talking about form talking about melody, you know,

OM: Dynamics.

YF: Dynamics, very good. So every week, for one hour a week, myself and my peers go into these one on one composition lessons with the one at one of these two, Richard Danielpour, Ian Krause, or our other two grade composition faculty, David Lefkowitz, or Kay Rhie. And for an hour, we present music we’re working on for any any instrument, and the professors give, you know, those sorts of comments, and it’s inspiring to see how they think because they’ve been doing this for decades.

OM: Yeah, there’s so many different elements. And it sounds like a really nice, tight-knit community.

YF: It is. It’s a very small major, there are four seniors. So me and three others. And the whole department, you know, underground somewhere around, I don’t know, 12 or 15, if that many, you know, and maybe about that many grad students too. I mean, it’s very small. So everyone knows everyone. And everyone is supportive of one another, which is rare. And I think it’s one of the another one of the benefits of UCLA, another one of the kind of draws for prospective students is that we have a reputation for being kind to one another and not like at some other music schools where, you know, everyone is expected to be like competing with one another for the opportunities and things there’s healthy competition, but just in a way that we push each other to be better not in the way that we push one another down or something.

OM: So, regarding next year, because since you said you are graduating this spring, what do you hope to do?

YF: That’s a good question. There’s a chance I’ll come back for grad school, which was something I never had really considered, especially like studying music. There’s a lifetime of stuff to learn, lifetime of things to learn. But I also was, like, very excited just to start working in the music industry, partly because that’s what I was doing. Before coming to UCLA, I was kind of dividing my time between community college and then working at different recording studios or studying privately around town. So I was pretty, like ready to leave. But frankly, I’ve just fallen in love with the people here and the resources that would be very, very hard to get access or to access. There’s a high likelihood I’ll come back if they liked me enough to let me back in.

OM: That’s amazing. So this is more of a specific question. But when I called you to ask if you wanted to do the podcast, you said you were making music for an organ. So what kind of music do you write…for various instruments? Do you know how to write for all sorts of instruments? Do you understand all the clefs? Or how does that work?

YF: That’s a good question. Yes, there are a lot of clefs. And yes, I know how to read them. I just finished that organ piece. And the organ like, like the huge, you know, pipe organs, you’d see like in a cathedral, which was pretty abnormal, you know, I mean, even among composers, there aren’t a lot of people who have written for that. I was excited about it, just you know, as, especially as a college student, where there are all these…you have all these musician friends who play all these different instruments, it’s like, oh, great, when else am I going to not only have a friend who plays the organ, but potentially have an opportunity to write a piece for a friend that they could then perform in the near future? So it was sort of like something, an opportunity, to take advantage of, you know, sort of like a learning thing.

OM: So cool. So wait, have you ever played an organ yourself?

YF: Yes. And my first time was playing it was in our school.

OM: We have an organ studio here at school?

YF: Yes, we have a recording studio, and we have an organ studio with a huge organ in the music building. And my friend Eleanor, for whom I’m I just finished piece she’s going to be premiering at her senior recital.

OM: Wow, that’s…is she like an organ expert?

YF: Yeah, that’s her major. So her major is in organ performance.

OM: Wow. How big is that major? Do you know?

YF: Smaller than the composition major, if you can believe it.

OM: So how is the program here at UCLA? How would you say has it impacted your life?

YF: I have, I mean, the greatest impact has just been on my musical development, I would say. I mean, I’ve, the quality of the classes here, and especially the wisdom of the professors really has translated tangibly. Like in my musical abilities, I do feel I’m a better composer, I’m better musician, all of those kinds of things. And I think coming to UCLA has given me like a little definitely more a sense of community. So being here, an institution, with other people doing similar things, it’s given me definitely more a sense of like belonging, and has given me maybe a little bit better a sense of what I’d like to do, like I, professionally, I definitely want to keep doing this in some capacity when I keep reading what’s known as concert music, which is sort of like what you could another name for, like modern classical music, but you know, composing music for the concert hall. But I also still have a large passion for film music. So yeah, I mean, it’s maybe given me a little bit more like sense of identity or direction.

OM: So in your opinion, which project was the most fun to work on? Was it absent king?

YF: “The Absent King” was definitely one of the more fun ones. I mean, I think “The Absent King” is, was incredibly rewarding. And I’m incredibly proud of it, I would say, like to work on, it was pretty stressful. Because the part of the story that maybe like I didn’t address as much earlier was the there’s a full choir in it, and there’s a full string orchestra. So Grace and I pulled together all of our musical friends from across town. I mean, at UCLA at USC, we even had some members from Cal State Long Beach and a member from the American Youth Symphony. But the logistics behind convincing the musicians first of all to join the project. And then of course finding times for rehearsal and then the recording session where everyone was available and keeping kind of the enthusiasm up and tending to everyone’s needs and taking care of all the logistics was frankly, like very demanding and very stressful to do like, alongside school and everything else.

OM: So we spent time talking about absent king, I want to go back to, because I know you made Hanukkah music. What inspired you and how did you, how was that and how does that differ from absent king?

YF: That’s a really good question too. So, about a year ago, I, It all started because I did a program through the Jewish Center here on campus, one of them called Chabad, there’s a program called Sinai Scholars, which essentially is just learning more about the history and fundamentals of Judaism. And the rabbi who’s leading the class told us the story about a New York Times article that was released, right, like at the at the turn of the millennium, it featured the front page of the of the 1900 edition, they had a front page for the present for 2000, for y2k, and they had a sort of prediction of what the front page of The New York Times would say, in 2100. And it said, things like Cuba, or Puerto Rico is the 51st state and dogs can vote. And at the very bottom of the page, it listed the Sabbath candle lighting time. Even like that far in the future, as like a little advertisement, which was something that was done at the time. The newspaper would actually list the time, every Friday night at the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath. Traditionally, women and their daughters will light candles to welcome the Sabbath. And, and I was so touched that by that little inclusion, that the idea is that even in the future, and forever, you know, society changes. And, you know, the world continues to shift and change. But the you know, the constant in life, for the Jewish people is the maintenance and preservation of our rituals in our history. And I was just incredibly touched by that story. So yeah, it’s beautiful, isn’t it?

OM: Yeah, that’s so cool. I never heard of that with the prediction for each century. That’s so interesting.

YF: I was so inspired by that, that I really wanted to write a piece of music that sort of like reflected that sentiment. And I thought that the clearest way to do it would be to write a new song that used that the lyrics of which were the, those candle lighting prayers. So I looked them up. And you know, I’ve heard them like hundreds of times, but I wanted to create a new melody for the for choir. So I thought about and I wrote a new melody for those prayers, and added even accompaniment added accompaniment with the harp and the piano, ultimately, the one that we worked on at schools but the harp and I did it just for Shabbat just for the Sabbath, which happens every week in the Jewish faith. However, after I completed all of that, I realized that the prayers said during Hanukkah, which also you know, one of the main things about Hanukkah is the nightly candle lighting. I really because the prints are actually very similar, they’re only a few words different. So modifying the song I wrote, to to work for Hanukkah actually wouldn’t be that difficult. And like you said, would actually be sort of interesting because there’s not a lot of Hanukkah music. So I did that, I did a separate version of the same piece of music for with the Hanukkah prayers. And then I presented that to the director of choirs here at UCLA, Dr. James Bass. And he he loved the idea, he loved the inclusion of the harp, just because normally, performances with choir will have a piano player who is accompanying the choir. So having a harp was a little unusual, but a beautiful alternative. So he liked the idea and he ended up programming it so in the fall, this this fall quarter, the top choir here at UCLA, our UCLA Chamber Singers, which I’m also a member of we learned this piece entitled “The Everlasting Flame,” and premiered it at our fall choir concert, and then recorded it in the recording studio here on campus. But in that show, that recording was our choir, and then a student harpist here. Alaina, Alaina Stark.

OM: So as a music student, do you have access to a choir or an orchestra? Or do you have to coordinate that? How does that work?

YF: It’s rare. You know, it’s a very rare opportunity. And like, great, if you get that opportunity. It’s It’s a huge honor.

OM: So there’s no orchestra or choir on demand. Dang it.

YF: I wish. One of the other cool things about our program is that the school occasionally invites guest artists to come in. And then we, the student composers, can write new pieces for them. So we can work with professional artists, professional musicians.

OM: Didn’t someone fly in from France? And you wrote for them? Right?

YF: I don’t think so.

OM: I feel like…

YF: Oh, oh my gosh. Okay. I know, I know what you’re talking. I just took a second. I wrote, yes. So there’s a very, very talented soprano, named Hilá Plitmann. She’s Israeli and but but lives in America. I think she lives in Los Angeles. But she’s, she’s very popular in the classical music world, like Juilliard-trained, you know, soprano, like worldwide, very famous, and very, very talented. And she she came in to do a residency with the composers in the fall. So she selected we all submitted pieces, and she selected pieces to perform on a big concert. And I wrote a piece for her in French. That so I think I think that’s what you?

OM: That’s, yeah, that’s what I was thinking about.

YF: Yeah, I sent a French poem by the poet Paul Verlaine, or I think, I think Verlaine. But it’s called Chanson d’automne, the song of autumn or autumn’s song, and she performed in the fall.

OM: That’s so cool. And you had our friend who helped you translate it right?

YF: Yeah. Michael.

OM: Yeah. So cool. Another question, different topic. I know, this is controversial. But there’s stuff going on with AI and music. And how do you feel about that? Do you see it in a positive light, negative light? Are you concerned? What do you think?

YF: I’m frankly not that concerned. I imagined that it could be used as a cool tool. And I actually know it is especially in like the world of music production. But I think that there are so so many parameters in music that you have to think about, you know, volume, you have to think about pitch, you have to think about the volume, the pitch, the rhythm and the melody and the harmony, all different instruments playing together, how long something needs to go on before it gets a little boring, and you need to change it up, not to mention the sort of intangibles, you know, the just emotional qualities of the music, the message behind it. There’s so many things that you have to take into consideration for music to go right or to work that even like even with the pretty like unimaginable abilities that AI has, I just I doubt that an AI generated music could ever reach the kind of reach the complexity, and most of the time complete reach the quality too have, like, well written music by humans.

OM: Yeah, I feel what AI lacks is an individual’s palette. So it doesn’t know. I mean, you could get it to do anything, but it doesn’t know what you want. And it doesn’t have that judgment, which is a super important characteristic that makes music and art. What advice do you have for other students who want to get into the music industry at UCLA?

YF: That’s a great question. Um, there are a lot of music students just kind of sitting around in the music building. And, frankly, just going around and seeing people sitting down and lounging and talking to them, is not a bad idea. Like if you’re interested, I also you didn’t hear this from me. But, well, right now, it’s a little tough because the practice rooms are all being renovated. But if you’re sneaky enough, you can usually get in the practice rooms, if you just want to play a little piano or something. You didn’t hear that from me, though. But if you have an interest in the music industry, I actually even even an even better, path toward developing that interest here. Beyond like, way better than talking to like an administrator or a counselor or a professor would be talking to actual students in the program. So I would literally just go to the music school and start talking to people, you know, politely, but um, that and then also look into the music classes that are offered to non-majors. Or if there’s one that is maybe a major class, but is one that you maybe know a little bit about, or you’re really passionate about. I know a lot of the professors are open to welcoming, you know, any students as long as they’re hardworking and genuine about their interest.

OM: What would you…what kind of creative advice would you give to students who aren’t in music, who want to, or who need to work on something and how would you inspire them to be creative?

YF: I, a lot of the work I do is sort of just making observations about the world, you know, and maybe looking at things in a different light. And I, and I mean, anyone can ultimately do that, like, I sometimes I will just walk around our beautiful campus, especially closer to the film building, you know, by the sculpture gardens and things where it’s a little bit there a little bit less foot traffic, and I love just kind of walking around and, and thinking, you know, and looking at the trees and things and I’m not, I’m not really good at any other art styles, you know, I don’t draw or paint or dance or act. But I, but all of those things, I mean, I’m kind of jealous of people who get to be creative, just because they love it not not because they’re trying to do it professionally. Because then the pressures off and you can just, you can just do the things that you like, without worrying about what other people think about them or worrying about, you know, if there’s an audience for it, blah, blah, blah. So I mean, for for people who are, you know, just tired out with their schoolwork and want to be creative. My advice is just to do it, because like the mental benefit, especially of just like, kind of, you know, like getting getting your mind out of whatever you’re working on or stressing about and into just a flow that’s a little bit more like loose and more enjoyable, is great. You know, I always recommend like a good walk.

OM: Thank you so much. Do you have anything else you’d like to say, anything that we didn’t get to that you’d like to mention? Other than of course stream “Absent King” on Spotify, and what other listening platform?

YF: Everything. Spotify, we have, we have a music video for “The Absent King,” for the choir piece, the Hanukkah choir piece, which is called “The Everlasting Flame.” That one is also out on all streaming platforms.

OM: Add it to your playlist.

YF: Add it to your playlist, right. And on YouTube, and everything. But no, ultimately, I am so, so thankful that I came to UCLA that I have now so many new friends that I’ve been able to I pursue my artistic goals, pretty uninhibited. And I’ve been so supported by the faculty and by my peers. And it’s just this this is a stellar school and especially for the people who have been here, you know longer than me who are who are just starting. It’s like, just take advantage of what you what you have, and definitely the things that you like, like pay attention to, pay attention to as you’re having experiences, the things you really like and think about what that might reveal about yourself. Or, or if that might help you get a better sense of you know, who you are or what you want to do. I think about that a lot. I pay very close attention when I like something or when I’m affected by something.

OM: Thank you so much for coming on the Daily Bruin Podcast and sharing. This is such a cool story. And I’m sure so many other students are going to want to hear it and are just as interested as I am because this is this, is so special and so unique. So thank you so much.

YF: Thank you so much, Olivia, this is great.

OM: Bruin to Bruin is brought to you by Daily Bruin Podcasts. You can listen to this show and all Daily Bruin podcasts on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud. And the audio transcript is available at Dailybruin.com. I’m Olivia Miller. Thank you for listening.