“All right, let’s make some noise.”
Jason Mraz sang a string of “oh, oh, ohs” into the sunny lobby of Los Altos Apartments. The audience sent them floating back.
“Woah, yeah,” he sang. “Woah, yeah,” the room answered. Then came “lover, lover, lover,” followed by a tumbling trail of la-la-las, li-li-lis and something sillier at every turn.
Wherever Mraz let the melody wander, the audience followed, all the way to a mischievous “mwahahaha.” The finale of “I’m Yours” had been improvised into a harmonious singalong with the whole room chiming in to the familiar melody.
“You’re never gonna stop doing what you love,” Mraz said between songs. “If it’s writing songs, playing music, promoting music, putting on shows, collaborating with your friends, that never goes away. So enjoy, get really good at it now, so you can own it then, and you can really create from a powerful foundation for when you get there.”
The Oct. 17 benefit concert, produced by five music industry majors, brought the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter together with Thornton singers, string players and a jazz trio. The performance came ahead of Mraz’s Asia tour, scheduled to begin Oct. 27 in Manila. The show was part of an assignment for the Live Music Production and Promotion class at USC’s Thornton School of Music.
Juniors Carter Murphy, Avery Gross, Oliver Aminoff and Walter Burkley, alongside senior Lucas Mortimer, handled everything from booking talent and finding a venue to selling tickets and coordinating production.
They called themselves WALOC Collective, borrowing the first letters of their names. Their lineup featured student openers the Wes Bozman Trio and Henry Cornell, followed by Mraz performing with Thornton musicians. The concert was a benefit for the Jason Mraz Foundation, which supports inclusive arts education, equality and food security.
The Collective said one of their goals was to bring Thornton students of all genres and specializations together, which they said rarely happens, and give them a professional performance opportunity with an established artist that could boost their musical careers. In an interview with Annenberg Media before his set, Mraz said the project aligned with his interest in creating opportunities for young performers and producers.
“It’s easy to discredit students as professionals for music,” Aminoff said. “But Jason’s like, ‘When are we going on tour?’ and there’s no separation between a professional musician worthy of playing on tour with Jason and these students. They’re equally all at a professional level.”
A night earlier, in USC’s music complex, the collaboration was still finding its feet at its first rehearsal.
Mraz had brought avocados from his farm, a small farmers market flourish amid the rehearsing. The students had brought new arrangements of his songs, including a version of “Lucky” with a samba pulse.
For Cass Sabota, a junior studying choral music, that pulse required some quick thinking. Gross had asked her to sing the duet just two days before rehearsal. She had practiced along with the recording on Spotify, but now she needed to match Mraz’s phrasing as he sang to a different rhythm.
Her usual musical world involved classical choirs, carefully prepared scores and the precision of voices moving together, she said. Here, there was room to change a phrase, add a vocal flip or loop a section. Listeners could also pick out her individual voice, and the freedom to add embellishments and show character was “nerve-wracking,” she said.
“It feels a little like it’s very on your toes,” Sabota said. “The classical world is very strict. It’s not very improvy. You come to the rehearsal having spent like five hours rehearsing this music, and you have it memorized. And this was very, ‘Oh, let’s switch this up here,’ and it was nice to musically think on your toes.”
Burkley said watching the musicians work out their parts during the rehearsal was a highlight.
“It’s awesome to see all these musicians just in their flow state and they literally were just in a rehearsal room yesterday for two hours and they figured it out immediately,” Burkley said.
On the show day, Sabota and Mraz’s “Lucky” duet became one of the afternoon’s sweetest moments. The song’s new samba sway gave a familiar melody a few playful steps, while Sabota’s harmonies rose alongside Mraz’s voice. A song she had spent two days listening to had become something she was helping shape.
For Mraz, hearing younger musicians approach his songs was a delight in itself. In an interview with Annenberg Media before his set, he said “I’m Yours” had acquired a different soul.
“I’ve performed the song probably a million times, and here we are today performing it in a brand new way, and it’s a wonderful experience,” Mraz said. “It’s the fresh take because every generation is going to come at it from a completely different angle, different set of experiences … I want to constantly be surprised and turned on to new styles and music.”
Getting those new arrangements to the stage meant finding time between coursework and regular ensemble rehearsals, Murphy said.
“You really have to want it, and so no one that is in the show is like doing this casually. It’s very much like they want to participate in this because it’s such a cool opportunity,” Murphy said. “They practice all day, all night. Sometimes they’re even part of like additional bands or choirs or groups like outside of their actual major, and like the hours they put in for this on top of all those things. I think there’s grit there.”
Gross, who approached Mraz’s manager, said the producers received confirmation roughly two weeks before the concert. Mraz’s upcoming Asia tour left them a narrow window to assemble the show.
The group recruited student performers through friends and friends of friends. Gross said he gave Wes Bozman about a week to write the instrumental and vocal arrangements. The musicians held their formal rehearsal the night before the show, only receiving the sheet music then at 8 p.m.
“We’re all working as fast as possible,” Gross said. “Organizing and managing and making sure everyone’s needs and wants are met … there’s like 10 planets that are all moving, and having to put these together into one event was a challenge.”
Mortimer said the group accepted the opportunity before dwelling on everything that could stand in its way and figured it out as they went.
“Before thinking about any of the doubts, we didn’t place any limits on ourselves for the show. I think if we did, it wouldn’t have [happened] … a testament to the Trojan spirit,” Burkley said.
Burkley hoped the concert would reconnect students with music they had grown up hearing. He and Aminoff said they were still figuring out what they wanted to do after graduation. Aminoff was considering music publishing.
“I just love the music,” Burkley said.
In an interview with Annenberg Media, Mraz described music itself as his greatest reward. Earning a living from it, he said, required talent and perseverance.
He also told the largely student audience about his parents’ support as he pursued a music career.
“The greatest gift my parents ever gave to me was the permission to fail,” Mraz said.
To Mraz, art is his way to change lives and bring people together.
“You can turn a blank page into something powerful … it does change the world for each and every one of us individually, but it also creates harmony and unity, and creates these gatherings and shared beliefs. And before you know it, we realize we’re all the same.”