The Gentlemen Project Podcast
Bi-weekly podcast highlighting impactful stories of parents and what they do to be successful at home and at work. Helping you turn the time you have with your kids into time well spent helping them learn the most important lessons in life. The Gentlemen Project Podcast is hosted by Kirk Chugg and Cory Moore-friends who are passionate about fatherhood and raising the next generation of great kids.
The Gentlemen Project Podcast
The Passionate Pursuit of Excellence with Brandon Stewart
Experience the transformative power of music with our extraordinary guest, Brandon Stewart, co-founder and CEO of Millennial Choirs and Orchestras (MCO). As a conductor, pianist, vocalist, composer, and arranger, Brandon brings a wealth of knowledge and passion to our conversation about music education and performance. From his inspiring journey of establishing MCO alongside his brother Brett back in 2007 in Orange County, California, to their expansion into Arizona, Brandon shares unforgettable stories, including a moving account of conducting during a New York City blackout. Join us as we uncover the profound impact of MCO’s remarkable performances and their commitment to inspiring excellence and passion through music.
Discover the unique opportunity MCO offers for families to perform together and create deep connections through sacred classical music. With participation ranging from young children to adults, MCO has become a beacon of unity. Brandon discusses the importance of patriotism in their programs, especially for youth, as a means to foster unity in a divided nation and instill pride in American history. As we reflect on Brandon and his brother's familial and environmental influences, we explore how these shaped their passion for the arts and their vision for MCO's future.
Unpack the synergy between parenting, mentorship, and musical excellence as Brandon shares insights on balancing family life with artistic aspirations. Learn about the importance of supportive parents and mentors from Brandon’s own journey from Juilliard to Brigham Young University. Through personal anecdotes, Brandon reveals how unconditional love and honest feedback nurture well-rounded individuals. He also previews exciting upcoming MCO events, including the much-anticipated "Messiah in America" production, and contemplates what it truly means to be a gentleman in modern society. Join us for a conversation that promises to inspire and resonate with anyone dedicated to the pursuit of excellence in music and life.
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Welcome to the Gentleman Project Podcast. I'm Corey Moore and I'm Kirk Chug.
Speaker 2:Today in the studio we have Brandon Stewart. Brandon is married to his wife, heather, and they're parents of three kids. He and his brother, brett, are the co-founders and CEOs of Millennial Choirs and Orchestras. If you have been around the Salt Lake City area, the Dallas area, the California area, you've probably seen or heard of this amazing group founded in 2007. He's the conductor, pianist, vocalist, composer, arranger. For 17 years he's devoted his life to educating and training thousands of people, which is why he's here. We think he's going to have an amazing perspective of how to teach through music and the disciplines that he teaches those that are in his orbit. He also teaches a lot of adults, though, because he's got a lot of adults in his choirs. He's conducted hundreds of performances in concert halls around the country, probably around the world as well. His bio says nationwide, but I wouldn't put it past him. His compositions and arrangements, such as the Vision, the Battle of Jericho, mary, did you Know? O Come, o Come, o Emmanuel, joy to the World, be Still my Soul, can be found on all of MCO's chart copy kits. He is passionate. If you've ever seen him perform and conduct, you would know that he's responsible for coining the mantra, well-known and recited often by the MCO participants. Diction, as I mess up a word right before I say diction, diction, passion, testimony. He particularly loves working with the youth of MCO and inspiring them to rise above mediocrity and be shining lights in the darkening world. His most memorable conducting experience is leading millennial choirs and orchestras in song on New York City's 56th Street during the Manhattanhenge sunset following the historic 2019 New York City blackout.
Speaker 2:I remember seeing that on the news. Did I say that? Right? Yeah, I remember seeing that and it just like gave me chills. We're going to have to get that story on the podcast for sure I can read for another 10 minutes. The dude is amazing. He went to Juilliard. He has a master's degree from Juilliard. He's done so many incredible things in this space and has rubbed shoulders with some of the best in the business. So I'm going to let him kind of round out his bio as he talks. But we are honored to have you in town and Corey and I are both super excited to come and listen to the Christmas concert the MCO is going to put on at the Eccles this year or a Bravino Bravino Hall. So, um, amazing to have you here. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Thanks for having and I I am so impressed with what you guys are doing and I think this we need more of this kind of thing. So well, thanks. Congrats on the gentleman project uh, I have to.
Speaker 2:I have to name drop a couple of our friends. You're the reason. They're the reason that you're here today. Uh, derek Minor, greg Trimble, were on the podcast a couple months ago. We got tickets my family got tickets to come to the MCO show last year and I had, I had expectations and they were blown away.
Speaker 2:I looked over at my wife several times. We were sitting by Derek and Greg and I looked over to the left to my wife several times. We were sitting by Derek and Greg and I looked over to the left to my wife a couple of times during the performance with my eyebrows as high as they would go going. Are you kidding me? This is. This is way better, way more, way more professional. I mean, you're dealing with kids like little kids, and these little kids are up there just giving it all, and I just turned to her several times with my eyebrows way high, just like can you believe this? It is remarkable what you guys have done with that. So will you give us a little background of why you started Millennial Choirs and Orchestras and where it came from and where it's?
Speaker 3:going Sure. Yeah, millennial choirs and orchestras started in 2007. So that we're starting our 17th season this year. Can't believe that it's gone by that fast, but we started back in our hometown of Orange County, california, with no intention of expanding to any other place.
Speaker 3:My brother had a very vivid dream when he was finishing his doctorate degree at Cincinnati Conservatory, where he spoke in this dream with a mentor that we both had in high school, kind of directing him. You know you need to do this kind of thing and, long story short, he called me right after and got me on board and I had another year left at Juilliard before I could go move and join him doing that. But we got started in 2007. And shortly thereafter, a couple years, we were in Arizona because they were getting wind that this was going on and they wanted it there. And fast forward to today and we're in Utah and Idaho, texas, and we just opened in Kansas City this last year, and so we just couldn't have imagined that this would have done that.
Speaker 3:But it shows how many people really are looking for something like this in their life, not just to perform in beautiful concert halls and perform great music with families, but also to have the weekly experience and exposure of this kind of sacred classical music that connects your soul to God in a unique way, and so we've seen that really bless a lot of families' lives. What's neat about it is you can be just an individual participating in MCO, or we have moms, dads and kids, teenagers all the way down to age four. That's unique in this world. You don't typically have that opportunity to be in a performing ensemble with your entire family, and that's something that we think is pretty cool.
Speaker 1:So how many people are in the group?
Speaker 3:So total we average between 4,000 and 5,000 participants across the United States, and it just depends on which community you're in. Some are larger and some are smaller, depending.
Speaker 1:Okay so it depends on the geography of who's participating, yep, and are the shows similar, different, the same?
Speaker 3:they're mostly similar. Yeah, that helps us keep a pretty streamlined approach in our, in our preparations and our production team, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:So so how many people were in the show that I went to, the patriotic one that I went to last year?
Speaker 3:And that was here in Utah. Utah's got a lot of participants. It's one of our largest locales and so that was about 1,100 people total. I don't think you saw that many on stage at once, but rotating throughout the evening. That's how many people were participating in Utah.
Speaker 2:One of the coolest things was. Sitting there, you're watching the stage and you're expecting all the sound to come from the stage and you only seat the floor at a Bravino Hall and all of a sudden, like you hear some rustlings and then the lights come on and the balconies are filled with choir members and they start singing. It's like freaking angels with choir members and they start singing. It's like freaking angels like, and it just like you have surround sound choir and everybody like you're watching the reactions of people in the audience starting to turn their heads and look up like where's this angelic sound coming from? And they realize that they're surrounded by this choir. It's one of the coolest things like from a performance standpoint that I've ever been a part of as an audience member.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm glad to hear that you liked it, because that's one of our favorite things too. We just love to kind of wrap the audience in this sound. It just really kind of saturates your soul in what we're doing.
Speaker 2:So one of the things that I noticed, especially in the patriotic program that I was involved with that I went to last year, there were kids learning things about our country and the history of our country and passion for our country. Call it patriotism. What have you that you don't see normally? Like kids aren't exposed to the same things as you're exposing them to, and I was watching these four-year-olds sing with passion about our founding fathers and george washington and I still remember that that that beautiful fun song that these kids sang about george washington wonderful, very great man.
Speaker 2:And so why? Why patriotism? I'm big on patriotism. It's it's kind of part of my makeup. I love it. I've always have, I'm still, involved in it. Why patriotism? Why now? Why with our youth?
Speaker 3:It's something that we don't always sing songs that are patriotic. It fit with our tour that we were going on. We were going back east to Boston and Palmyra in a big tour that we do every couple years and we wanted to expose all these participants to some of these great stories of the founding of our nation. But over the years we've done several patriotic performances. There's great music about America and it helps unify a very divided nation and we saw the recent concerts do that quite significantly. They softened people and people started, I hope, forgetting whatever side you were on and you're just Americans and we're we're proud to be that and and um, we all can coexist together in harmony and I think that I think that that concert series really um did that and then you do a christmas series, correct, is that what it is?
Speaker 1:yes, we do a holiday series. I don't know what you call it a christmas series every year in.
Speaker 3:December. That lasts about two to three weeks across the nation.
Speaker 1:So that's killer. So talk to me a little bit about where this love of the arts. You were a conductor and pianist, right? Yeah, as background, and your brother sounds like he's in the arts in some way shape or form, yeah, so where did that come from? Is that a family thing? How did you both end up there?
Speaker 3:It's a family thing. It was also an environmental environment thing. Like we grew up in Southern California in the Huntington Beach Fountain Valley area. That area in the eighties and nineties was a really booming arts scene. Um, so all throughout our schooling it was just a cool thing to do to be a part of the arts, to be a part of music. It wasn't frowned upon in any way and it was encouraged in fact. So our parents encouraged it, our community encouraged it, our friends' parents encouraged it. So we were doing swimming and water polo and we had friends in football and baseball and they were doing choir, they were doing the band and the orchestra and that was just that was how we were raised. It was just that's. That was normal to me, um, and that's actually uh.
Speaker 3:I see other communities in the nation that don't have that and it. It's alarming to me and sad to me because I want. I want girls, boys, young men, young women and men and women of all walks of life to know that music and the arts is a great thing. I think it rounds out an individual, it makes you a better man or woman. We have a culture like a subculture, I think in America, especially right now that men do sports and women do arts, and it's not, but it's. It's present in a lot of communities and that is definitely something I'm committed to changing with millennial choirs and orchestras. We have so many teenage boys and young men and boys in this program and I love seeing that they're coming in in their football jerseys and the basketball jerseys and sweaty from practice and then they're opening their music and singing this beautiful, refined music that makes you a multi-dimensional human being. You know, I think a lot of times men and boys can be driven to be a one-dimensional person and music and arts should be applauded and encouraged.
Speaker 1:I think, yeah, that's amazing what you said about bringing people together from both sides. As it relates to being patriotic, um, I know we're all fairly religious folks, so, um, bringing people closer to god and softening their hearts, I think you said earlier yeah, what a great way to do it. Music is probably one of the best ways to do that, in my mind.
Speaker 3:And the fastest it really happens fast.
Speaker 1:That's a good point.
Speaker 2:I'm interested because you have a master's degree from Juilliard. I'd love to hear you play the piano someday. Is there science behind that? I've heard that there is, but now I'm in the position to ask somebody who's probably studied it. Why does music have such an effect on people, Like it crosses the boundaries of emotion quicker than any other medium. Oh yeah, and is it just the way our brains fire and function?
Speaker 3:Like.
Speaker 2:I can still remember what has it been Like eight months ago or something. I can still remember what is it, what has it been like eight months ago or something. I can still remember the words to that little George Washington song going on in my head as I'm thinking about it. Right, and I can't think of another song that I heard eight months ago, that I'd only heard one time and I can still hear it in my head Like that's powerful, right? So do you have some research or some statistics, or can you explain why that is?
Speaker 3:There's so much research that's been done. In fact, my mom got her master's degree and her master's thesis was all about music in the brain at home, growing up, about how there is so much science behind the Mozart effect and the math and science behind music and how it can literally rewire your brain and your thinking and your intellect. There's been tons of studies about kids who study music at an early age and how they perform better in the classroom and they perform better socially in life. I mean, there's so many things. Yeah, so it's an important element of our life.
Speaker 3:To leave music out would be leaving out a huge part of humanity, what it means to be a human, especially that connects with God. What I love about the music of the master composers is that many of these Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and many more were connected to deity in some way, shape or form. They might not have been devoutly religious, but they were connected and the music that they wrote was oftentimes godly music or talking about God or Jesus Christ in some way, and you feel that their writing is heavenly in that way and that's why we connect to it hundreds of years later in that way. But yeah, there's definitely a lot of research that's been done on that.
Speaker 1:So talk to me about your family. You have children, I assume, and are they involved in the choir?
Speaker 3:Yeah, my wife is my better half. She's got an amazing soprano voice and we sang together in college in our undergraduate work. And we have three amazing kids and my daughter, our daughter Ashley is actually a vocal performance major at Brigham Young University. Now, I know that seems cliche. She's coming from two parents that are musical, but she did this all on her own and she loves it and she's passionate about doing that Environment right, right, it's the environment.
Speaker 3:And then we have two sons. One is a 16-year-old, he's on the varsity basketball team and also plays French horn. And we've got our youngest son is 12. And he is also a basketball. He loves basketball so much and football and he loves to sing and so and play the piano.
Speaker 3:And that's been an important part of our family is we want well rounded people and that's how my brother and I were raised, in a family that really emphasized being well-rounded, not just doing one thing, and I'm grateful for my mom and dad who realized that having a one-track person is not going to lead to success or happiness in life. So it was a lot about balance. When I was getting too intense with piano as a young kid, my mom would be like, okay, you need to go on this camp out, or you need to go do this or make sure you're doing this sport, and so my wife and I try to do the same with our kids. I'm not big into basketball or football, but my sons have kind of forced me into that world and so now I know more about NBA players than I ever thought I would know, and I think it's such a cool world, um, but I also am the first one to be like okay, now go practice the French horn, get some balance.
Speaker 3:Um, sit down at the piano, remember to to do that. I think it makes it develops gentlemen, it develops men who can be really refined before we got on the podcast.
Speaker 1:Here we were talking about my little girl who's in New York and she has now called her mom and said thank you so much for forcing me to play the violin, because force was probably the right word a lot of years when she was growing up. So was that ever hard for you or your kids? The whole practicing thing? I mean? I think it's good for them in that it teaches them that you know hard work and dedication and skills and you name it. But was there times when you were done playing the piano or that your kids just like? I don't want to do this I'm asking this for all parents everywhere. You know, like teaching an instrument to your kids, especially if you don't play it. Yeah, what's tough, and I will give, give my wife 110% of the credit, but talk to us about that in your mind.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's totally normal and we just have to kind of roll with those moments. Um, I think that sometimes we are too quick to say, oh, you know what, they're just not interested in piano anymore, they're not interested in the violin anymore, let's just bag it. Um. But then when the coach rails on the kid or they're feeling like a failure and that we're like get back out on that field, well, let's get back on the piano, let's get back on the violin. Don't give up. It's, you're going to have those moments. That that shows me, in those moments, that we are about to make our biggest breakthroughs and get better at what we're doing, just like anything in life. Amen.
Speaker 2:Can I ask you a personal question? Sure, what is your vision for MCO, like, what's the purpose behind all the effort?
Speaker 3:What's neat about millennial choirs and orchestras is that the vision really has been consistent over the last 17 years. There's been things added to it, but it's always been to change people's hearts and bring them closer to God and help them develop a love and a connection to this music that my brother and I felt was was on its way kind of out out and we wanted to revitalize it. We wanted to bring it to life in a way that connected people to it, and 17 years has proven that that happens. We have kids that are coming in. I get letters from these kids, notes that are handwritten, sometimes from athletes or people that never were interested in music, that are thanking us for helping them find a love for music, and that's really what it's all about.
Speaker 3:We've done that. We started in California, we've done that now across the nation and we want to continue bringing it beyond the nation. We want to go and bring this to the world, where we have a growing presence on social media and we're having people from all over the world right now begging us. You know, come, bring this to our country, bring this to Germany or Indonesia or whatever. There's so many people that are seeing what we're doing and they want it there too.
Speaker 2:So in time one of those moments that you had this great reach was this blackout in New York City, right.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:Will you give us kind of the insider's view of how that happened? And if you haven't seen this, go YouTube it, because everybody had their phones out. There's probably quite a few copies of this experience, but it was on, like all the shows, like Today and Good Morning America, and all of these places gave it airtime. Yeah, so will you give us a kind of what happened and how that reach helped you guys grow?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we. We went on tour to New York city specifically to perform in Carnegie hall and we wanted our participants to have that experience and people, you know, they all paid their own way to go and they saved for an entire year to make this happen and a lot of people put in a lot of effort and sacrifice to get there. And so we had three different concerts that were all the same but to fit all of our participants and audiences we had to use the hall three times to fill it and we gave two performances and we were in rehearsal to sound check the third and final performance and the lights went out and I just thought it was a thing, you know, like a temporary thing. We were waiting for them to come back on and we soon realized that it was all the way up the entire west side. And as soon as I heard that, I was like this is over, like when you have that big of a blackout in New York, they're not going to solve it that fast. And so we started discussing quickly and quietly our team like how are we going to do this? How are we going to? And these people sacrificed everything to come and do this and their friends and family got to do this yesterday and this afternoon, and now they're not going to. Um, how are we going to help this disappointment? And so, long story short, we were kicked out of the hall by New York, by Carnegie, because they just couldn't have everybody in there in the dark, and we had almost a thousand kids that were ready to perform, dressed in their performance attire, in lines around Carnegie Hall and then hundreds and hundreds of adults in lines closest to the street, shielding them from all the passersby.
Speaker 3:While we waited for this to get solved and we waited for a while Pretty soon we started hearing people singing, and then people started coming up to us and going you guys should just sing out. And then we're like, nah, we don't want to do that, we're going to wait, we're going to go back in and do this in Carnegie Hall. And finally they convinced us and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people thousands actually were starting to crowd around, all these audience members who were waiting outside with their tickets. They waiting outside with their tickets. They wrapped around the back of the hall on 56th Street and crowded around and we got a chair and the conductors took turns standing up and conducting songs as all the participants sang and it echoed.
Speaker 3:As you can imagine, in New York City everything echoes and, interestingly, right down the way, as the sun was setting, it was Manhattanhenge, which means the sun is setting right centered in between the two buildings. That doesn't happen very often. That's a very rare thing. So it was a special night and everyone was feeling the power of this, as thousands of New Yorkers were hearing this music. They were coming to listen, and so phones were out and everyone was filming. I don't even know how many videos of this thing are out there and so phones were out and everyone was filming. I don't even know how many videos of this thing are out there, but it turned out to be the most memorable moment on that tour. It was disappointing, yes, but it was also incredibly memorable, and people still talk about it to this day. That was a great story.
Speaker 1:I got chills and I haven't even seen it yet. I'm going to have to watch that later and have my family watch it. That's cool. It was cool. How fun Was your family there? Some of your family.
Speaker 3:Yeah, my family had already performed.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:So my wife and kids were walking down 27 flights of stairs from the hotel because the elevators were out. So they were making their hike down and everyone was figuring out. But it was, um, it was really cool to see the team effort of millennial choirs and orchestras, because you had thousands of participants who already had performed, drop all their plans and rush to the aid of all these kids that were out there. You know they were helping chaperone and helping protect these kids. It was, it was a unifying moment that's cool.
Speaker 1:So talk to us a little bit about your upbringing and like what made you you like. I like to get into that because I feel like like what your parents taught you or what experiences you had define who you become a little bit right and then you take off on your own in your teens and twenties and learn for yourself. But talk to us a little bit about your upbringing. What made you you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think the first thing I would want to say for parents who are listening is that my upbringing wasn't perfect and my parents weren't perfect, and they'd be the first people to tell you that you might see a person on a stage performing and think, oh, their upbringing must have been so, you know, fill in the blank. Oh, their upbringing must have been so, you know, fill in the blank. But we had our difficult times and we had like you brought up earlier the battles to get your practicing done or the disappointments in life that every family goes through. We also had some really really hard times that we had to wade through as a family, and I think what I'm most grateful for is the fact that my parents were as consistent as possible, so the schedule and the reliability was always there, even amidst the turbulent times in our family life, and so we had incredible mentors and my parents were great about making sure that we had the best mentors.
Speaker 3:I remember the time that I was taking from one piano teacher and we went to a piano competition and my mom noticed several students of another piano teacher being awarded prizes and she noticed how they played and she paid attention to how much they had improved from the year before and she walked right up to that teacher at that competition afterward in the hallway and said I want my kids to take from you and she was just determined to get the best teachers and the best mentors for us, and that lasted through our high school. Um experience with our conductor in high school was just brilliant and had one of the best programs in the state of California, and so I'm grateful for them, for looking for um, for excellence in who was going to teach us. They'd never settled for mediocrity and I think that's a big shout out to my parents for that. That's cool.
Speaker 2:Did you want to be at Juilliard like your whole childhood? Was that the?
Speaker 3:was that the Holy grail for you as a kid? No, like I, I didn't really think about it. I just was a kid and so I loved. I knew I loved doing music, but I also love doing other things. I love swimming and I love doing other things.
Speaker 3:Um, we spent all of our summers on the beach in Huntington Beach being junior lifeguards, and so we had a lot of fun things and neat things that were challenging us and helping us become who we were going to be Later on, as I was heading toward college years or thinking about applying for college, that's when I started really thinking about you know what do I want?
Speaker 3:to do and where do I want to go? And again, my parents had raised me to always shoot for the most refined or the highest level of training you can get, and so that's where we ended up going and doing that. So, and again, it wasn't just Juilliard. Brigham Young University was enormous in my development and my brothers as well. Such incredible training there at that school. It's an incredible school of music.
Speaker 2:Both of you went to Juilliard.
Speaker 3:No, just both of us went to BYU, both of you went to BYU and you went to Juilliard I went to Juilliard and my brother went to Cincinnati Conservatory Another great school, yeah.
Speaker 1:Wow, what difference is their age with you and your brother? Four years he's older.
Speaker 2:Okay, by four years, and you're both very involved with MCO.
Speaker 3:We are co-founders and co-CEOs and we've been on this journey since the very beginning, so I mean that's cool, that's I mean to do that, as you know, your love is your living and your passion and that's that's awesome. Yeah, it's, we're very grateful for it.
Speaker 1:And how did you meet your wife?
Speaker 3:My wife and I dated in high school. Oh, no, kidding, yeah we were friends for a long time and then we ended up dating. And then I went and served a mission in South Carolina for two years and she dated other people and then I came home and we ended up getting married Nice.
Speaker 1:And then did you live with her, did you say, in New York with your first child for a bit?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we had our daughter. Well, we were at the tail end of our time at BYU and then we went to Juilliard for my master's degree and my daughter was like a year and a half old, and so it was fun having a kid. It had its challenges, but it was fun having a kid in New York City. She definitely got a lot of attention on the subway and in Central Park. It was fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you don't see a lot of kids in Manhattan anyway.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's certain pockets you do yeah, okay, well, I wouldn't know because I haven't lived there enough.
Speaker 1:but that's cool, that's a great place.
Speaker 2:So going back that far, I know that I would be a better or different father today if I had kids again that were little. How did your fatherhood journey adapt from first kid to third kid?
Speaker 3:Oh, wow, it's well. Each kid is so different, but even with just my first one, I I think I changed a lot. I was so determined when I first got married and when we first started having children that I was going to teach them all piano and they were going to be amazing musicians, right, because this is my world and they all come with their different likes and dislikes. And I I started with my daughter with very I was teaching very intense piano, like I had a studio of very competitive students and I just wanted her to be part of it. So I started teaching her and I, after a year, I was like this isn't working. I can't be dad and mentor at the same time and so it just didn't work. It works for other people, but it didn't work for my personality and hers, and I also realized that this isn't her love. This wasn't what she wanted to do, but she was very talented and it turns out that she loves singing so much and I just changed, enforcing or kind of broadcasting my desires for my kids onto them, and just wanted to expose them to things so like, for instance, my son who loves basketball. I wanted him to be into music somehow, because I knew that that was in there somewhere and I knew he loved movies and he loves movie scores. So I started playing movie scores, like as we were in the car, and I'd be like that's a cool instrument, or you know what instrument that is, or whatever, and we talk about it and he always started kind of leaning toward that's a cool moment. And it was always the French horn and I love the French horn.
Speaker 3:So I started I just had was on this project like sneak in, I'm going to get him to like the French horn because I could totally love that in my house being played. And he just kind of gravitated toward it more and more and finally we're like, okay, let's do this. You know you're going to do it, but I wanted it to be him that liked it. You know, if we force stuff upon our kids, I don't think it'll end up being what they're passionate about.
Speaker 3:I've seen a lot of kids who had that experience and they actually pull away from it. But if we can let them kind of magnetize to it themselves, then I think that they're going to end up sticking with it for a lot longer and loving music, and so that's the change I've made as a parent is just kind of exposing, hoping that they gravitate towards something, and then, after they do, that's when I will be like, okay, I'm going to hold your feet to the fire, said you're gonna do this. Now we're gonna stick it out, because that's just a principle that I believe in in anything, if sports or school or music or anything that's good.
Speaker 1:Who was it that said throw away the script?
Speaker 2:Rob.
Speaker 1:Schellenberger, yeah, Rob Schellenberger. He kind of similarly said I had like this script for what I wanted my kids to do and how they were going to behave and what they were going to become. And then you realize that they are them and that you know they're going to be themselves and they're all so different. And so he said that his quote was throw away the script and just throw nurture them along.
Speaker 3:Yeah love yeah yeah, I agree with that that's cool.
Speaker 2:I like that a lot um, tell us, uh, you, you've. You've talked to us a little bit about some of these mentors like your, your high school um music director, and probably some of these people at byu and juilliard that really formed you into who you are and increased the love of the thing that you were, that you were doing. Is there anybody that you haven't mentioned? That's been just pivotal pivotal in your life that you wouldn't be the same without um, I think I can mention every one of them.
Speaker 3:Um, our, our piano teacher growing up. Her name was Susan and she was incredible and she just was such a unique individual. She was not a member of our faith, she was from a different country. Um, um her.
Speaker 3:Her family was from a different country, her family was from a different country, and so she had a very different outlook on life than my family did. And so this LDS family comes to her and she's learning like, okay, what is this culture you guys are raised in? And I was so grateful because she was able to call out the cultural cop-outs that we had as a family and we did. We had some of them. And she would just say that's a cop-out, you're just settling for mediocrity or you're settling for this. And I was so grateful she had this outside perspective of the world and this universal perspective. It wasn't just America or my LDS faith, it was the whole world. And she would teach us from that perspective Like this is what happens in this country, this is what these kids do in this country, and you're going to be competing against this type of person and you have to come prepared to meet that.
Speaker 3:That was pivotal to our upbringing and we were with her, sometimes twice a week. We would drive 50 minutes in Southern California traffic twice a week to have private lessons and then group instruction. So two miles Right Totally and it was a lot of time in the car and a lot of sacrifice for mom and dad. I remember my dad taking us a lot to those lessons, driving us in traffic. But exposure to that was instructional, it was foundational in our development. It was therapeutic in a lot of ways. I mean, any great teacher knows they're not just a teacher, they're also a therapist. This is just how it is. You're working with the psyche of your students always, and she really helped develop the psyche of my siblings and myself and developed us into my brother and I, into the men that we are today in a huge way. And of course, all the mentors after that continued that as well.
Speaker 1:That's cool. Has she been to the shows?
Speaker 3:Yeah, she comes when she can and and she's just always a huge champion for what we do. She loves it.
Speaker 1:She has to be, so like this is awesome she's great, I remember all those days you didn't practice brandon.
Speaker 3:Yep, she does she sees the whole picture from beginning to end, like in a way that even our college professors don't, cause they didn't see us when we were eight. You know that's a. That's a unique perspective she has, but she was. She was so good at pointing out our personal um flaws, but also our mental, like the way we would try to get around things or maneuver like, try to get out of doing things or take the easy route. She was like so good at spotting that and she would call you out on it immediately and she'd call her favorite term was professional fake. So she'd be like Brandon, you're being a professional fake and I'm like what's that? She would explain how you know you it's, it's packaged in professionalism but that you don't have the cred underneath it because you're not taking the time to really do this or do that or study this. She wanted to develop people who were credible in their field and sigh admire her and I'm grateful for her for that.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. Anybody else?
Speaker 3:If I started naming them, it would be the rest of the podcast.
Speaker 3:It really was all, the all of our professors at BYU, um, irene Perry Fox was instrumental for me at BYU. She was just powerful in helping me develop into the professional um and steer my career in the way that I wanted it to be. Um, and then at Juilliard Jerome, jerome Lowenthal, who is still alive he's in his nineties, still teaching at Juilliard. And um Judy Clerman, who taught me conducting there, and many, there's so many others, though I don't want to like leave anybody else. So all of them at at BYU and at Juilliard Um, and then all the way from when I was a young kid, they were powerful mentors to me.
Speaker 2:I think it's important that we like that, we hear the stories, like just that story of your childhood piano teacher. Some of those things are very translatable in the way that we, that we speak to our youth, um, um, I know I was pretty good at trying to get out of stuff. I know my kids are pretty good at trying to talk themselves out of stuff and to get over that that bump of doing things the right way, not the easy way, you know, and those are all things that we need to be teaching our, our next generation, um, to to overcome.
Speaker 2:So I think it's valuable to hear some of those stories of people that have held your feet to the fire through love yes uh, not because you were a reflection of them, but just because they demanded greatness, there was such demand and I'm grateful for it and I I I really gravitated toward that.
Speaker 3:I think my personality liked that and I responded to it. And I know there's some personalities that they they appreciate a softer approach and that's fine as long as there's an approach. You can't just go into this with this. You know if they love it, they'll, it'll come. No, there has to be guidance and there oftentimes has to be firm and loving guidance.
Speaker 3:I remember Dr Perry Fox at Brigham University. There were many students who thrived under her and there were some who had maybe a harder time because she was very specific about her expectations and she wouldn't let you cop out. And people I think came from a situation where copping out was allowed. They didn't realize it, but once they got with Irene Perry Fox it was very much made aware, it was brought to light. But I'm so grateful for that. I mean she would sit there and tell me straight when things weren't working. She was also incredible about spotting the slightest mistake in your playing. So I'd be playing the fastest passage by Beethoven or Liszt or Rachmaninoff and she would stop me and say you missed two notes. She had such incredible ears and that could be daunting at times to go. Okay, I mean, I'm practicing six to eight hours a day and you spotted two notes, but that's the stuff that I feel like in America generally speaking we're losing a lot of.
Speaker 3:We're losing a lot of. You miss those two notes and instead it's just like you did a great job and I think it's great to do a great job and make people feel like they did a great job. But I'm carry all of this stuff from the Susan Bonner to the Irene Perry Fox and I put it into my work with millennial choirs and orchestras, and when they're singing I'll stop them and say that sounded bad and I'll let them know I love all of you, but that sounded bad and I don't want you to sound bad. You don't want to sound bad because you're going to be performing in front of almost 10,000 people in a Bravino Hall in the next month. You know we're going to do five concerts in a Bravino Hall.
Speaker 3:That's almost 10,000 people, and you deserve to sound your best, and so there's a way to do it and of course that's you're walking a tightrope as a mentor, always and I see coaches walk this tightrope as well of demanding and enforcing versus loving and inspiring. But I've seen that, generally speaking, the majority of these kids they actually will thrive off of that and they'll rise to the occasion and they'll go. We never knew we could sound that good and that's what a mentor is for is to spot the weaknesses in you and inspire you to shed all of that, all the cop-outs, all the excuses, and become the greatest version of yourself. I think parents can do that too in a loving way, but parents have to team with mentors. It has to be a teamwork thing in my opinion.
Speaker 1:You hit on something pretty big there in that I tell people it works, even in our professional construction industry. If they know you like them, if they know you're coming from a place of we care about you, we care about your future, we care about your project, we care about you as a person and you're brutally honest with them and you'd be. That's the best scenario, right? Yeah, Same thing with your kids. I do agree that your kids sometimes need someone that's not the parent Totally. The parents should still do it that way. Right, I love you unconditionally and I'm going to tell you how it really is. I'm not going to fake it with you.
Speaker 1:Um, but the mentor, sometimes they don't hear the parent after a while, Like they just they tune you out, they roll their eyes, Cause I've seen and I'm sure you guys have too, I've seen it where I've said the exact same thing to my son or my daughter, right, what? Regardless of what it is, whether it's violin or tennis or basketball, right? And I say, well, you're bud, you're not doing this with your serve, and it's like whatever, dad. And then two hours later, his coach says the exact same thing and he's like, oh, that's good advice, yeah see dad.
Speaker 2:I need to do this.
Speaker 1:Okay, buddy, right, but I think that's a valuable lesson for everyone. This idea of if I can show you unconditional love, then I'm able to give you criticism. But it is a tightrope, it is right, but I think as they mature, depending on the person, obviously makes a difference. But I think that's a good life lesson. Is those that combination?
Speaker 3:it is, and I tell the singers and instrumentalists in our orchestra that because I can see in their faces sometimes they get overwhelmed because I will give them these lists of things that need to be fixed right and it sometimes is a lot at once and you can sense, you can feel the room get like, okay, we're about to explode with being overwhelmed and feeling anxious about this and I I just tell them listen, if I finished that run with you or that section with you and said nothing to you, that's when you should be concerned.
Speaker 3:If there's nothing to say, that means that I don't believe in you that you can do it, but I'm now handing you all these things that I totally believe that you can do to become better. Take it as a compliment. So I try to remind the musicians in MCO to take it. I know you have to think about that differently with parenting, but it works in MCO. When I'm with them once a week and I can deliver those hard messages sometimes, it's because they're worth it. It's because they can do what they're being asked to do. It's good stuff.
Speaker 2:There's lots of translation there that we're going to let our listeners translate for themselves, because I think it does translate well into parenthood, right? I think sometimes we just get into those comfort grooves of things are not bad, we're just going to leave them like they are and we don't push for excellence. But I mean we've talked about this as a consistent theme throughout this podcast is that we demand excellence, but we do it through love.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that's parenting. I love that.
Speaker 2:Right, so we are out of time, but I'm excited to go to this concert. If you haven't got your tickets, I think you're probably out of luck, right? They're also.
Speaker 3:I think they sell out In Utah you are, I think we have some in Austin and Kansas City. They can still go there, yeah.
Speaker 2:You got to get on these tickets quick because they go quick, because, uh, once you go one time, you want to go again and you tell all your friends how amazing it is. So, uh, yeah, millennial choirs and orchestra. Is there a website they can visit to learn more about this and also to get the book that our friend greg trimble wrote about the choir? He's on the board and a beautiful book about the choir, what it means and the history of it, how it builds and transforms our youth. It's a beautiful book.
Speaker 3:It's an awesome book.
Speaker 3:Where do they go? Yeah, they can go to millennialorg two L's, two N's, millennialorg. You can also find us on Instagram and Facebook. They can go to millennialorg two L's, two N's, millennialorg Um. You can also find us on Instagram and Facebook and we perform not just in December, but we perform twice a year, every year, so people can come. We're doing a huge production in the spring called Messiah in America, our largest production we've ever done, and, um, we're teaming up with Gentry to do that performance. It's going to be awesome, so they can come there if they miss the Christmas one. We know the Gentry guys. Yeah, they're great.
Speaker 2:We know the Gentry guys Awesome. We always ask our guests at the end of the podcast what they think it means to be a gentleman. Would you answer that question for us?
Speaker 3:I love that question, that question for us. I love that question. I think I came into this podcast to meet with you both and already on my mind, the idea of a gentleman to me is to be more than one or two dimensional To me. To be a true gentleman, you can't just go to church and be a spiritual guy and then watch the football game and go to work. That's just one, two-dimensional. We need to have a well-rounded exposure and outlook on life, and I think that the arts is so important to make that happen. In fact, I know it is.
Speaker 3:I know that God thinks this, because God is the ultimate musician. He is the one that is creating all this beauty for us to enjoy on this earth. And so it is not just music's for women. Sports is for men. We've got to break that wall and come at this as young men and men and become gentlemen that are multidimensional. And then you realize that when you value great music or sacred music or the arts, you can see how that develops and deepens your spirituality as a human being. Some of the greatest athletes understand that the arts make them better athletes. You start realizing that this whole and deepens your spirituality as a human being. Some of the greatest athletes understand that the arts make them better athletes. You start realizing that this whole thing works together to make you a deeper person. So yeah, that would be my definition of a gentleman.
Speaker 2:We've never heard that one before and I really like it In the context. I think it makes perfect sense. So thank you, brandon, for being with us today.
Speaker 3:Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:It's been a pleasure to have you here while you're in town and we will see you at the show. Awesome, we'll wave.
Speaker 1:Yes, thanks for spending time with us and thanks for your insights. It was really cool.
Speaker 2:Thanks for joining us today on the podcast as well. If you found this interesting, if you found it helpful, if you're going to glean something from this for your own life, consider sharing it with somebody else that might do the same, and we appreciate you spending your time with us. I'm kirk chug and I'm cory moore.
Speaker 1:Thanks, everyone up.
