Music With A Mission | Featuring Aileen Chanco

Fremont is part of Silicon Valley, the second largest city in Alameda county and the fourth largest in the Bay Area, covering 92 square miles with more than 230,000 residents. Fremont Focus, now hosted by lifelong Fremont resident and former city council member David Bonaccorsi, will delve behind the headlines to showcase our civic, artistic, educational, nonprofit, faith based and business community leaders in Fremont and the surrounding cities of Newark and Union City to explore matters of local interest. Today we are honored to have Aileen Chanco, who is an accomplished pianist who's grew up and has lived in Fremont. Welcome, Aileen.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm honored to be here.

And I got to tell a little bit about Aileen and then Aileen will talk about her own background. But she made her stunning debut with the San Francisco Symphony at the age of 13 as a, as a pianist. And she's continued to enthrall audiences and critics alike with her instinctive brand of virtuosity and sensitivity. Determined to pursue a career as a performing artist, Aileen immersed herself in musical studies with Herbert Stessin at the Juilliard School where she received both her bachelor's and master's degree in music. After she graduated, she's been around the world. She's performed originally. We'll talk about this. She was actually born in the Philippines and she came back and had in 2003 a highly anticipated concert with the Manila Philharmonic Orchestra. That must have been a high point for you.

Oh, it's amazing to be back there.

To be back as an adult. As an adult, not as a three year old. Right. So. And I've gotten, I've known Aileen for many, many years. There's a wonderful biography about Aileen on her website, which is www.aileen-chanco.com. and I've been honored, Aileen, to work with you over the years when it was Music at the Mission and now Music with the Mission. We'll be talking about the origin story of Music at the Mission, what a chamber orchestra is and why it became Music With A Mission and your connections to Fremont then and now. But I was looking at this wonderful biography of places that you played around the world and I was disappointed. Aileen, I have to tell you, you know why I was disappointed?

Okay.

Because you didn't list the time that you performed at my parents house when you were about 20 years old at Fremont. It was a. Yeah. Had a baby Steinway piano there.

I was very memorable. I do remember.

You do remember. That's where I first met you, when you were about 20. So I got a Suggested edit to your website. So with that introduction, Aileen, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Well, I was born in the Philippines, and, and I came over when I was about a year and a half with my sister, my parents. And first we landed in Southern California, and then my father decided to bring us up to the Bay Area and he found Fremont. And Fremont at the time was really small. There's a lot of pictures, so I can't say firsthand. There's just. I remember Fremont at that time from pictures and, and wonderful place to grow up in. I remember Lake Elizabeth the way it was Jet's petting zoo. I just saw someone mentioned that in Fremont in one of the Facebook posts in Fremont. And I'm like, I remember that. And it was such a wonderful community and still is. It's huge now. When I. When I was 15, I went to Germany as an exchange student. I remember my host mother saying, where's Fremont? We can't even find it on the map. I'm like, oh, it's so tiny. But I went to Catholic school In what's called St. Leonard's what was formerly called St. Leonard's School now is Our lady of Guadalupe. Our lady of Guadalupe. But I think they don't have a school anymore. I can't remember. And then I went over to Holy Spirit. Okay. And there, you know, there's a very wonderful musical life here. My mother was a pianist, and my father worked for Kimber Farms when he first landed here. Just then he. Then he started working as a microbiologist at Shaklee Corporation. But. But I remember Kimber Farms as just a forest and we picked walnuts and get lost there.

So a little side note, Kimber Farms became a development which is now Kimber park on Mission Boulevards. And suddenly some of the homeowners had their backyard start cratering. It was because of the chickens.

There was a lot of chickens.

A lot of chickens. So your dad contributed that?

Oh, definitely. But that's very good for your vegetables. That's right.

So you went to Moreau, and then after Moreau, did you go at that point to Juilliard?

Yeah, I took off as soon as I, you know, when I graduated, left for New York, I shook the dust off of California and I said, I'll never come home because that's one of those rebellious teenage things. And here I am, and I am grateful to be back and be a full blown Bay Area girl.

So tell us some of your highlights as a performing artist, as a musician. We had read off some of them in the Bio, but share some highlights for yourself.

I was lucky enough When I turned 13, I did debut as a soloist with the San Francisco Symphony. And as a result I won some awards. I played in with. Gosh, I should have brought my curriculum vitae now because now I'm embarrassed. I'm going to leave something out. But I did perform with the Boston Pops Orchestra with Kent Nagano as a result of that. And I went and played down south Southern California with UC ucla. No, no USC orchestra because I won a competition with a Seventeen magazine or a Seventeen magazine competition.

There you go. We can see that in your aileen-chanco.com yeah, listed there. It's all there.

It was wonderful playing with orchestras. I really enjoyed that. And then of course, when I came back from college, I got a manager and he had me performing with orchestras around the country. And then I got a little lonely and I thought, oh man, you know, doing solo work is wonderful and it's. You get to meet a lot of people. But then you go back to the room, the hotel, and you're quiet and you have a bottle of wine by yourself. I thought, I kind of miss playing with people. So I just thought about what can I do about playing with other people? And that was the first idea of starting a chamber music series which is not orchestral. It's a group of musicians who play between. It's between two and nine. It could be even. But.

One of the differences. And you can describe more what a chamber is, but what it isn't. It's not a symphony with a director, a conductor. And in fact, the chamber kind of was a precursor to the symphonic movement, isn't it? Or were they always in parallel? How did that.

It was in parallel, you know, I mean, everybody always wanted to play together. You have a band, you have. You go to a bar, people want to play together. And then it expands and. And the concerto came about later. The concerto, sorry, the orchestra came about a little bit later as you started wanting to have these expanded groups. But chamber music is one person per part, and they are all, in a way, soloists and accompanists. It's all collaborative. You know when to step in and when to step out. You have to really feel each other more. You don't have someone telling you what to do.

One of the amazing things, and this is, we'll be talking about music when you founded music at the missionary and why it was called that. But one of the things, and I've watched you for many, many years with these performances is you may have artists from around the world. And you've never performed together, but you rehearse a couple of times and you begin to riff off each other. It's kind of like the jazz improvisation. Do you have that feel right?

Oh, yeah. Well, you know, music is so universal to language. You don't. I went to music master classes when I was in college as well, and the teachers didn't even speak English or they would. Sometimes I did. It was called Moscow Conservatory in America. And they brought all these amazing teachers from Moscow for the very first time. They were shopping like galore. They loved it. They loved it. Anyway, what they had was they had a translator and caviar. Always, no matter what, Caviar, champagne and a translator. And it was a very new festival. They ran out of money towards the end. You know what they did? They fired the translator. We still had champagne and caviar, but the. But so what they would do during these masterclasses, they would say, who knows French, who knows German, who knows Russian? Okay. A lot of times no one did. And so we just had these amazing masterclasses with just speaking with music through music. Just, you know, and I learned so very much that way. So when you are playing for the first time with somebody, you have a connection through music. Yes. Everybody has their own interpretation and you talk about it and you decide whether you want to do this way or that way. But the connection through music is universal.

There's a wonderful quote and I'm looking for it right now that you have about the vitality of music. And here it is. Let me read this quote. I thought this is wonderful for you when people want to buy tickets for the upcoming season. Musicsj.org and you go onto the website and then you go to the page for the first concert that will be on November 1st at St. Anne's in St. Anne's in Fremont. And it's from Gordon Getty says music unites our communities, inspires us to achieve and reminds each of us to be the best version of ourselves. It is essential to our existence. And I can't think of a better quote as a lead in to you founding Music at the mission 21 years ago in Fremont. Tell us about Music at the Mission, why it was founded and why the name.

Well, I can go back to. Well, why did I come back to California? So I was wandering in New York City and my husband, currently boyfriend. Fiance at the time, was.

You got that right. He was boyfriend first and currently your husband.

Right.

Just want to make sure you got that.

Oh, no. Are we on Air. No. Okay. You know too much about me. My husband Bill, at the time we were. He was my fiance and he was. And taking his master's in Boston University. Just he. We all graduated New York, he went over to Boston. We were going to get married. I was. Came back to California to plan the wedding. And he said, you know, I already. I had prepared like, oh, I know what I'm going to do in Boston. I have this thing I have. I was going to start my dma.

What's dma?

Doctors in Music. Okay. In B. And I thought it was, you know, going to go that route, academic route. And so his, you know, in the middle of the winter, you know, he gets with. Hit with. Or that the area gets hit with a very, very, very heavy storm. And he was from New Jersey and he happened to be living in a house full of women who said, could you be the one to shovel the driveway? Anyway, so that decided. He's like, I don't ever want to live in a town with this much snow. With terrible. And he says, do you really want to come up here? And I said, I have all this stuff. He says, I want to go to California. So when we got married, I came back or after that vacation, I came back and I tried to find a church. Old saint, sorry, St. Joseph's and I.

And saint. That's St. Joseph's in Fremont, next to Mission San Jose.

Right. Associate Mission San Jose. I wanted to get married in Mission San Jose. So I became a member and I started, you know, got a part time job, you know, accompanying. And, and so I was affiliated, affiliated there. And when he came back, we got married, blah, blah, blah. And the pastor there, Monsignor Seamus, wonderful, wonderful man, was very open to us having or starting, not starting a series, just having one concert. I said, you know, mission's beautiful. And this area doesn't have a. Doesn't have chamber music, doesn't have an organization that does any chamber music at all. Tri Cities, there isn't. So I said, well, let's just do one concert. And he said, of course, let's do it. So I presented one concert and then with the help with a lot of people, the choir members were like, oh, let's do this. They were wonderful. The congregation came and then they said, when's the next one? I was like, what? You know, and so I'm like, oh, okay. I have some friends, you know, they're coming to do a concert. Maybe I can piggyback on that. We're doing a concert together. So we added that, and then it just kept going. And finally we realized we should have a name because this is turning out to be a series. So we thought, okay, this is Music at the Mission at Mission San Jose. And that's how we started in 2005. February, February 26, I believe, was the first concert.

And one of the things, in addition to providing chamber music here in Fremont that we didn't have previously, you also brought an artistic flair to your fundraisers for many, many years. You had mass grape ons, right?

Yes. Talk about that. That was fun. And that is a, that's, that is an endeavor with a lot of wonderful people. Everybody had their niche. You know, we, what, we what we came up with a mask, first of all, was just a ball. Let's have a black and white ball. That was the very first thing we did in at Best House. And that was fun. We, Gail Stewart from Mission Coffee and her husband Don had they shucked oysters.

And let's give a little local flavor. Best House is at the Sisters of Holy Family. I don't believe it's there anymore.

I, I, I honestly am not.

Yeah, I believe. But it was one of the great historic locations, great places that people get married. When you mention Gail and Dawn, it's Gail Stewart who had Mission Toffee for many, many years until she recently retired. And she was very good at designing or branding these various masquerade balls through.

Food, through food, through food, through food and, and, and decorations. And then we had Christina Valdez. She came in and, and she was at the time with Federicos Kiko Rodriguez.

And her, she serves currently on the Fremont Arts Commission. So she's serving that very creator. So talk about your recent change. Although you can talk about some highlights and concerts. Let me, I don't want to skip too quickly. Not only did you perform for concert goers, but you began to expand what music at the Mission would do in terms of reaching out to students. Talk about that.

Yes. That was wonderful. Well, one of the things I wanted to always be able to do is not just chamber music, not just concerts. Concerts. We need to. The reach needs to be all aspects of community, of society. Oftentimes it's difficult to go to concerts because everything from the cost or exposure, classical music is boring. I don't know if I want to go. You know, when you start young, I think the connection from when you're very young and you've heard something before and then you hear it later on, you're like, oh, you wake up to it. So I believe that you need to expose students, people, everybody, as much as possible. So we started bringing our artists to the local schools in the tri city areas. And we started doing about five to seven performances in five to seven different schools. And it expanded from there after that.

We called it include Kennedy and some of the public schools in Fremont, right?

Oh, definitely, yeah. All of that. Well, now the one with Kennedy and Wolters Junior High, that was in 2018. That was a program I'm very, very proud of. And we got shut down because of COVID and that was called Artisan Schools. And we did 12 weeks of a program. So we spent four weeks working with the kids to teach with the. I should say with the teachers to teach the kids composition. And then we returned later on after they figured out a little bit of those skills. And we brought. We took ideas from them and then we sent their ideas to a composer and he arranged a piece that they created that they composed. And four weeks later we bring it back and we work with them on how to play it best. And we spent four weeks with them doing that. And then the final four sessions are at the end of the year where we played with them and then we performed. And that program lasted for a year and a half. We were supposed to do the final concert in 2019, but. Well, we all know what happened in 2019. So we had an incomplete piece and no performance. But the kids were amazing.

You've also done not only the Artists in School program and having these concerts for students in the outreach, but you've also done fundraising events with music at the mission. One of them most recently was for the victims of the wildfires in la. Talk about those kind of concerts. There's one also for. We just had an earthquake in Cebu just a couple days ago. 699. Horrible.

I just.

But that reminds me of one of the past concerts when there was a typhoon.

Yes, I mean, we. I believe, you know, art isn't just for art's sake. Music isn't just for music's sake. We have a mission to participate in all aspects of life. And I wanted us to be able to raise money for events and if we could and things that are outside of us arts are in greater need. We can't do it all, but when we can, I hope we can. So the first one we did was actually in 2012, 2011, for the victims of the tsunami in Japan. And that was huge. We brought in a lot of. I was very happy. We brought in a lot of money for that or we raised a lot of money for the victims in that area. And then we did another one for the Haiyan. It's called the Typhoon in the Philippines in 2013. And then we also did a panel for Ukraine that was just to bring more attention to that these events. And more recently were. Was last February we did a. It's called from the Bay Area with Love. It was for the victims of the LA Light wildfires. And.

And that was. I want to commend you too, because you had. Had been rooted at the mission church and you began expanding. We'll talk about the name change as part of that, but that was at nala's Discovery Church built a good relationship with that wonderful congregation, which is very engaged. So let's transition now to changing the name for music at the mission, not focusing on why you necessarily had to change the name, but focusing on why you now call it Music With A Mission.

Well, the most obvious is that we are no longer at the mission. So I mean, we are not there. So Music With A Mission. Well, people say, well, what's the mission? Well, the mission, it's hard to nail down, but our theme is no longer just musical, but purpose. And that is a little bit. Can feel a little bit vague. But I can say that our upcoming concert.

Let's talk about it, because I thought you touched upon it as exemplified by Brotherhood in the Yin and Yang. So talk about your upcoming season then.

Yin and Yang is. Because it's. The first concert is called Brotherhood. The second one is called Venus Rising. And so Brotherhood is really. It's not that it's male, it's Solidarity fraternity. We are there during. Right now, everything seems difficult in the world. Oh, it's really about music that was composed during times of resistance. And the program includes music by Arvo Pärt, an Estonian composer, Frederic Chopin, who had to flee his own country of Poland, and Dmitry Shostakovich, who had to. Had to.

That was during the Stalin era.

Yeah, during the Stalin era. Yeah. He had to survive during that time of. Well, he was persecuted because of his music. So. And, and we will have a video of that coming out about that. And I didn't want to say too much about that, but this is, this does represent what can we do as artists, what artists have done, composers, whatever, to stay, to be. How do I say it?

To be relevant, to be engaged in what's happening. And you may be playing music from a different era, but it's really relevant to what. What we're going for.

Very much so.

And, and I, I don't want to under undersell you because you're not. You haven't mentioned something I think is really important. Define what your, your title is with Music With A Mission and what your role is in curating the com. Composers gathering the musicians and, and the themes that you're just discussing. So what's your title?

Well, it's executive artistic director. So it's both executive director and artistic director. But we have our artistic director, just artistic director is Bill Everett. So what we do at the beginning of the season, or I should say summertime, is we start curating, we start talking about what do we want to, to make the season about what do we want, what's the purpose. And you know, it's all we're always hit by, oh my God, the current events are happening and what can we do? What is our role? You know, what can we do about that and, and draw attention to. And so him and I were always talking about, okay, just music as resistance. And last year we wanted to be able to do, to raise awareness about the amazing contributions of women composers. And so we wanted to do it this time. We didn't raise enough money last year, but this time we want to be able to do that. And we are doing Venus Rising coming in June and very much excited about that. It's new music. It's all women composers. It's about women who had had to. Their contributions were not necessarily brought to the attention during their lifetimes, like Louise Farrenc. Libby Larson, though, is an amazing woman. Amazing composer. Lily Boulanger died in when she was like about 22 years old. So she had a lot to say but not very long to live. So, and she was, you know, she, she, she, her. She wasn't celebrated as much as she should be.

So let me, as we wrap up this wonderful interview, I want to make sure that people listen to it. We're going to have show notes www.musicsj.org. you go to that homepage and you'll be able to find and get tickets for the Brotherhood performance, which in Fremont will be on November 1st. There's other performances on the 2nd and the 4th, but the one in, in Fremont is at St. Ann's Episcopal Right here in Fremont. And please get tickets for that and tell us about some of the show notes that people are going to be able to see when they listen to this podcast. What are the, what other things are they going to be able to hear?

I think I just gave two the videos. Okay, two videos. Yes. So the first video is our artistic director, Bill Everett, just welcome.

Oh, sorry, I'm going to interrupt. But Bill does a wonderful job before every concert giving kind of a historical context of each of the composers, the music. So when you go into an actual concert of Music With A Mission, you're armed with a lot of information, and it just enlivens and enriches the whole experience. So everybody needs to catch that.

Well, so this. This is a little bit different this year. So Bill's doing the videos, meaning he is. We're disseminating these videos before the concerts so that you do learn a little bit about the music. And then at the concerts, we have another person named Dr. John Prescott, who is a musicologist. Oh, he's wonderful. Yeah, yeah. Cal Berkeley and wonderful. And he gives another very interesting spin right before the concert just to talk a little bit about the pieces, and it's always really wonderful. So we try to arm our attendees with as much information and background as they can have without overstimulating. And then hopefully, things feel new and that they enjoy and want to come and see and hear it.

Yeah. It goes from just simply, hey, entertain me as somebody that's listening to really engaging in the process. It enlivens. It just helps Amazingly, of course, Dr. Prescott is sight impaired, and so he has a tremendously acute sense of hearing. So it's a. You went to. I don't know what the. What the equivalent of having a photographic sonographic. I have no idea. But this is ability to retain music and to talk about it. You watch him, and he's as enlivening is what he's saying. There's something very animating. Yeah. Correct.

Oh, yeah, very much.

And yeah. I want people to think, well, this is not you. We didn't even talked about your key phrase, music out outside the box. Right.

That was music at the mission. Yeah, but I mean, but we. That was our kind of that. But we don't say that.

Yes. Okay. But one of the things was the. You know, when you take music like Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen and make an arrangement from that. Oh, yeah. I want to hear that again. Wonderful. The art, you know.

Our February fundraiser will feature our tango group, Quinta du Qui Lombo. So it's out of Piazzola. Passionate music there. And that'll be at a winery. So.

Okay. And people will have. As that event comes closer, we'll have people have the ability to support the arts whether they go to the concerts or not. They certainly can go to our fundraiser.

Yeah.

Aileen, I want to thank you. Is there anything else that you want to add as we wrap up here?

You know, hope to see everyone there this season.

Wonderful. The 21st season for Music With A Mission, starting Nov. 1 with the Brotherhood concert at St. Anne's Episcopal in Fremont. Go to www.musicsj.org and get tickets now.

Thank you so much. Thank.