Melody and Brian in concert: bringing culturally diverse music to LBCC

Performing a playlist in English, Spanish and Portuguese and aiming to provide students with more than just a way to inspire students on their musical journey, Pianist and composer, Brian Kehlenbach, and vocalist, Melody Versoza, performed a set sung in front of the library.  

This concert served purely as a way to expose culturally diverse music and help inspire the musician in each student passing by.

Concluding the show with a Q&A, which was held to offer students an opportunity to openly ask questions to help answer any curiosities they might have regarding the world of musicians. 

The Melody and Brian concert was the third out of the four concerts that have and will take place on campus.

Following this act will be a Native American flute player on May 31. Pat Sheng, one of the members who helped produce this event, revealed that the flutist will be bringing a Native American flute he made himself to give to one lucky person in the crowd. 

Pat Sheng and Marie Hu worked to pull together the production that took place on campus this Tuesday.

Hu applied for a small equity grant in 2020 to start putting on these concerts, and although they did receive the grant, set dates for concerts were put on hold until campus could open up again. 

Sheng teaches in the music department at LBCC and Hu worked as his intern for two years before the COVID pandemic. 

Both Sheng and Hu were not hesitant to use the grant money they received in order to spread what they both enjoy.  

“When’s there’s an opportunity to spend grant money to get musicians here on campus, yes of course! That only benefits, number one, our music students, but number two, everyone on campus. It’s also sort of my way to give back to the music community,” Sheng said.

These concerts expand music further beyond traditional pop, classical, jazz, etc. It brings diversity to the table that is often overlooked in the industry. 

“We try to bring diverse artists, for example, the Sri Lanken pianist, Mexican tuba player, Filipino vocalist, and native American flute player. This is so good because we don’t have native American classes or classes centered around traditional jazz or anything like that… This helps expose people to something they may not have heard before,” Sheng said. 

Kehlenbach and Versoza have been working together at Santa Ana College for around 30 years now. They have also had the privilege of performing together many times. Versoza reveals that in the past they have sung jazz together an umpteen number of times at Santa Ana College. 

These two admit that they have grown to be friends over the years of performing together and will never miss a chance to collaborate. 

“She has performed a lot of my music and this is not something to take for granted. When a musician wants to collaborate with you then you tend to work together well and tend to appreciate each other,” Sheng said. 

Kehlenbach’s music has been performed all over the nation. One of Kehlenbach’s pieces even succeeded all the way to Carnegie Hall.   

Although this event brought only a small amount of attendees, opening up the diverse culture of music to one student’s world is enough to motivate this program to continue to perform. 

“My expectations are low, I don’t really have a goal other than to bring music and culture onto campus, otherwise we are just sitting here and there’s nothing happening,” Sheng said.