By Lauren Farberman
Theme Editor
From dreading her weekly piano lessons to writing and performing original music, senior Jane Fishman now has her eyes set on a career as a musician.
Fishman started playing piano when she was six and knew it was not the instrument for her, she said. She says she would not practice and eventually quit. Once she started high school, she got back into piano and singing and began performing and creating her own music.
“I was inspired to start playing piano again by seeing people sing and play piano together,” Fishman said. “Once I started playing again, I became more serious about music and began to connect with other people who had a similar interest in music.”
Fishman later began singing and playing the piano together, and she also started to write her own music. She has eight binders filled with her songs that she has written over the past five years, including entire songs and scattered lyrics. She has been writing her own lyrics for her music for a year and a half now, devoting all of her free time to music.
“I have found some really bad songs that I wrote from when I was younger,” Fishman said. “Now that I take it more seriously, I force myself to write everyday, which helps me get better at the process.”
Fishman has played several local venues such as the Lighthouse on the Hermosa Beach pier, Surf Fest, and for the Manhattan Beach Summer Concert series. She previously has performed with her friend and Costa alumni Noah Vikland, who plays the guitar, until he went to college last year. Now that Vikland is away at college, Fishman does her preformances by herself.
Link: watch Jane in her element, performing a cover
“I have been playing small random venues, singing and playing my own songs too, which is new for me and has been a little scary,” Fishman said. “I am starting to play more of my own songs, but my sets are still mostly covers because I do not have enough of my own music to fill up two hours.”
At the beginning of this past summer, Fishman started posting some of her original songs on a music-sharing and streaming website called Soundcloud. Once she realized that most of her peers seemed to like her music, she decided to keep uploading her original songs onto her account. Fishman’s friends, including Costa senior Junko Cohn, have supported her music throughout the years.
“Every time Jane sends me a small part of a new song that she is working on, I’m amazed,” Cohn said. “I think it’s really unique that Jane writes her own songs because it allows her to add personality and passion to the lyrics, which helps when she sings them because each one is about something that she feels.”
Link: check out Jane’s Soundcloud account
Fishman plans to continue her love of music in college. She hopes to find a college that is in an area she wants to live in and has a strong music program. She is currently in the process of submitting vocal auditions to colleges with prestigious music programs such as the Wharton School of Music at the University of Southern California and the Berklee College of Music.
“I plan to study music in college and pursue a career in the field for as long as possible, or until I run out of money or motivation and inspiration,” Fishman said.
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