On December 20, 2017, BCA students were treated to an hour of lively music, sweets, and festive smiles at Mission Music’s Winter Concert. The holiday excitement was palpable with students laughing and singing along to classic winter favorites. Some performances included Alice Ipekci singing Shake Up Christmas by Train, Jia Mu, Cassandra Moe, and Kelly Lu singing Sweater Weather by The Neighbourhood, and Bridget Wigan and Cassandra Moe singing Mistletoe by Justin Bieber. The concert was closed by club co-presidents Brian Cho and Celina Peralta singing Knockin on Heaven’s Door by Bob Dylan.

Mission Music is a Wednesday club at BCA that aims to raise money through musical events. The money that the club raises is donated to musical charities targeting students who live in communities that cannot afford to offer free music education. The club also aids independent musicians who may be struggling in the music world. The club was founded in 2010 by Lexi Lerner (AAST 2014) and is now run by Cho and Peralta. The Academy Chronicle had the privilege of sitting down with  Cho to reflect on the concert.

AC: How long have these in-school concerts been going on for?

Cho: This was actually only the second in-school concert that Mission Music has hosted. The first one was last June (2017)- we held it as an end-of the year concert, as a farewell to the 2016-17 school year. Actually, at that time, we didn’t want to have an in-school concert. It was sort of an accident that we had it. Because of the chaos of June and all of the hectic events that come with school ending, there just wasn’t enough space in the school schedule for us to hold an after-school concert. It was like, “Oh darn! We can’t have an after-school concert so I guess we’ll just have to settle for an in-school concert!”

But it was a crazy turnout! We had a full house; there were people standing near the edges of room and sitting on the floor, it was crazy. It was amazing. A happy accident at the least! We really enjoyed our June concert so we decided to do another one this holiday break to mark the end of 2017. It went really well again. We had another full house and I could tell people really enjoyed it. We definitely want to do more concerts in the future.”

AC: How do you hope these concerts will help the BCA community?

Cho: At face value, people are donating money and we are going to give it to a musical charity. But the benefit concert is also a loving community event. The people who came here wanted to be here . It’s a time when we can all sit together in a loving space, enjoy music together, and bring back a “human” aspect to BCA. Especially with the stress associated with BCA, it’s really nice to have these moments where we can all be together and enjoy something we all love. There’s just something about the joy that music brings to people. This joy that comes out of these concerts makes people want to do good things for others. What’s amazing is that when you help one person, that person wants to help another person, and the “goodness”  just spreads out. So I think the concerts definitely help out the BCA community. It brings us back from hardcore studying to just being with friends and enjoying life.