2022 Arts Award: Michael Pelosi

by Katie Waken ‘22

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Michael Pelosi ‘23

Major: Philosophy

Minor: Management and Leadership

Tell us a little bit about yourself! What made you decide to come to BC?

I'm from Ann Arbor, Michigan. This is going to sound a little weird, but I got mono my senior year of high school, so when I did college applications, I applied to three ED schools and was like "Ok, that's it. I'm not doing anything more. I'm so tired." BC was a really big win, but I knew nothing about BC. I'd never been to the East Coast—kind of scared me a little bit, not even going to lie, because I'm a little Midwestern boy—but I fell in love with the size, I fell in love with the [Bands] Program. Things that got me were the community here, the location [near] the city, and the level of university it is, but even after I applied and got in, I would start getting messages from the Marching Band. I started getting phone calls and emails like "Hey! I heard Michael got into BC. Congratulations. If you want to talk about considering Marching Band, let us know." Obviously, I feel bad because I knew the people calling me now in retrospect, but I was like "I'm not gonna call them back; that's scary." Having that constant reminder was like "Yeah, I can make this a home. I can make my mark here and make my place here."

How have you gotten involved with the Arts on Campus?

I get a lot of flak for this, [but] I applied really late for Marching Band my Freshman year. We do recruiting throughout the Summer—we're actually doing recruiting in the Spring this year—, but I didn't register for Marching Band until a week before band camp. They kind of gave me a little bit on that, but for me it's like once I'm in it, I'm here to make a big contribution. I did it just because it's a great way to meet people on campus, a great community, and I love making music. That's a big part, making music together on a really neat, dynamic stage, so that's why I first really got into it and then I fell in love with it and continued it ever since. I did kind of waver [about] if I wanted to go to school for music or what else I wanted to pursue, and I always knew that music, art, is always going to be a big part of my life no matter where I go. Looking at the Bands Program here—even though [BCMB is] not a part of the Bands Program and the Bands Program is not part of the Music [Department] here technically—I still was able to find that musical creativity that I really have loved since I was a little kid. Aside from the Marching Band, I'm in BC bOp!, the Jazz Band, and also University Wind Ensemble, and I've played for the Pep Band as well, so those are other band stuff that I do. Music in general, I'm part of Full Swing. Just being able to dance to music I think is just another joy of living, that along with music. I've taken several music classes at BC, but I've decided not to be a Music minor. I decided to just take music classes that I enjoy. I also took a composition class on campus, so I'll see if I could do something with that maybe next semester. I'm not sure if music is part of my career goal, but I'll definitely look into some internships and opportunities to tap into that. 

What instrument?

Trombone. I'm a proud trombone player, low brass section all the way. I'm also in other Bands Programs, so I play trombone for those. I also play piano, but that's just something I like to do in my free time. That's something for me, I think. I'm a big trombone guy. I even played in the trombone choir for several years. I started playing trombone in second grade, and I continued with it in high school. I participated in the University of Michigan Youth Ensemble, so I got a little taste of the collegiate atmosphere there.

As a Philosophy Major, do you think that there's any intersection between Philosophy and Music? What experience have you had incorporating both of them into your life?

For me, I think Philosophy is something that a lot of people can do. I think one of the things is like "What can Philosophy do for you?" Then the weird [snarky] remark back is, "It's not what Philosophy can do for me; it's what I can do with Philosophy." I think it's just about how you live your life and how to find happiness and joy. One of the big ways I've found that is from music. I think there's certainly ways you can tap into art and music in ways that can find happiness and joy and ways that might not be as fulfilling or as engaging and meaningful; obviously, that means different things for different people. If I went into something like Music Education, I would definitely bring in Philosophy for students. I want to help bring out the good in people, whether that's through music or if that's just through life or conversation. I think [about] the idea of Beauty that goes into any aspect of art. Philosophy, depending on what area you're in, isn't just logic, reasoning, and rationality; obviously, those paly hug roles, but I think there's an amount of feeling involved. When you have when you see or listen to something and you see that sort of Beauty, it makes you think that somethings there, something more is there, and it's not just "Oh, this song's beautiful because I happen to like it"—that song is Beautiful, this piece is moving me, and I'm trying to figure out how and why and what is there. This sublime moment [is what I'm] I'm trying to figure out right now. I think there are aspects that Philosophy and music overlap [in], and that's one of the things I'm excited about, especially how I think music can influence people's outlook on life. 

Have you been able to find that Beauty in any of your personal work?

On a personal level, I like to make my own music. I dont really share it, but it's something that I like to do. I keep it on my phone. Each song is like a prayer, like a personal letter. Those are ways that I feel like I can do that for myself. One of the things my dad says—and he's a good guy—whenever I'm playing [is], "You could be paying for a crowd of 1,000 people, but you're only playing for a crowd of 1". I try to go into every performance with that outlook. I'm not doing this for the people there. As far as moments, particularly in the Marching Band, being in an ensemble with 150 people making music together, making this amazing whole sound, it's just an incredible feeling. We're able to be together and make this one big Beautiful sound and fill up an entire stadium, so that really moves me. 

What's your position on the BCMB eboard, and how has your experience with the eboard been?

The way Marching Band eboard works is that we'll have 4-6 Executive Board Members, and we don't have designated roles like maybe some other eboard have. We just kind of siphon off and section off work as it comes to us. I don't really have a designated role besides being able to work for them and work together with them. I think the big part was that, last year, I was Fan Engagement Coordinator, and for me, that played a big role in how I stepped into the eboard position, looking for how to engage with fans but also reintegrate our members back to in-person. One of the things that I was really impressed with this past year was that a lot of organizations and clubs took hits numbers wise, but we were able to recruit just as many members as we had my freshman year pre-COVID, but it takes a lot of hard work, a lot of emails and phone calls over the summer. We try to do all our stuff, trying to get 140-150 people to do stuff that they actually have to pay to be in and dedicate all the hours to, but the people who are in it are amazing. 

What did the possess of going back to in person look like, and is the BCMB back to their full pre-COVID strength?

I'd say we kind of evolved a little bit for the better. I think COVID taught us that there's more ways for us to make art together, to make music together and dance that wasn't just on the field. That's when we started recording our own stuff through looking at social media and Youtube, trying to expand our Spotify. Going into this year, one of the big things was [that] we didn't want to go back to what we were freshman year. We want to take the lessons we've learned and take the creative processes that were garnered through COVID and bring that into now. Now, we're integrating a lot more technology into us aside from our normal halftime performance because those are just 10 minutes and we want to be a little more accessible than that. 

What kinds of things have you done out of the Football season?

The off season—last year felt like the entire season was an off season—[is] mostly our showtime Youtube video stuff as well as the music video last year. This year, I think we started off the offseason with the "Phantom of the Opera" music video. We got to record in the Boston Opera House, and we got our friend John Lam, the principal ballet dancer, to play our Phantom. It was really neat that he was able to join us for that and have that collaboration. That was the first really big thing, but really what the off season is is preparing for the next round. A big part of that is recruiting for our SL's, trying to make sure we get ED1, ED2, Regular Decision, get the word out there even to current BC students as well as our Partner School Program. Also making sure our social media is up to date, and we do a lot of messaging over that. As far as playing and rehearsing goes, we have two things that go on: we do require that our members participate in one extra ensemble outside of Marching Band just to keep something going; it could be something like LAG or it can be the Bands Programs, so anywhere on campus where they are playing an instrument. Two things that we offer are Brass Class and Brass Tech. BrassTech is specifically for brass players just focusing on intonation, tuning, and really just fine tuning our playing together as an ensemble. The other thing which is really cool and I like a lot is called Brass Class. For the regular season, we get a lot of applications for woodwinds, but we want to make sure we have a good balance of the ensemble, so what we actually offer is free brass lessons for woodwind players who want to crosstrain over time to brass instruments. That's one of the cool things that we do, and the people who do that are absolutely awesome. I think it just kind of shows how people can be in whatever section they want and still feel like they're part of the band and not feel like it's like "Oh, because I'm a trombone, I can't talk to the trumpets". We're all together, and we have our own little communities but we're also one big community, which I like. We're willing to help eachother out through literally everything, [even with] free lessons for an instrument, which I think is really cool.

Can you talk about the creative process behind Showtime?

It was like everything last year was a grind, especially because we were entering a space that we kind of knew nothing about. We had to be our own videographers, our own script writers, our own editors, and we're Marching Band people. We were able to utilize some of the talents that our individual members have, which is pretty neat. Whether they are really good at audio engineering or really good at editing videos, we were able to tap into that. Showtime was such a difficult time, but we made it accessible really to anyone who wanted to participate, so if you wanted to be a part of Showtime, you could easily do that. It's interesting. If you go to Youtube, you can see how episodes get better and better. When the idea was conceived, we were like "Ok, we know we have to do something, one of things we want to do is we want to be able to share our music, we want to be able to share our dance together, we want to be able to utilize a lot of the past footage and past media that we made, we want to be able to create new stuff, and we want to bring it together". So, we were able to have skits, we were able to bring back past media we have like little segments on the show.

People could do fun little things if they want on their own. We had a little culinary corner where one of the members would make something, make a recipe, and show you how to do it with music in the background. Not traditional Marching Band stuff, but that's just the way we roll. The big thing that I really am going to be super grateful that I had the opportunity to do was the interviews. We got to interview prominent BC alumni, faculty and staff, as well as prominent musicians in the Boston Area. We started out interviewing our band director—that was the trial run, which went well—, and then we kind of got bigger and bigger. We interviewed Coach Hafley, talked about Marching Band. Different episodes were [trying to] encompass different themes, so we talked about Gameday [with Coach Hafley]. We had one episode that focused more closely on our Dance Team, and that's when we talked to the principal dancer John Lam who's just a really cool guy. We had one episode that talked about the Boston Irish culture, so one of the things we talked about was [that] we would do collaborations with the Dropkick Murphys; we interviewed Ken Casey, and he was just a really cool guy. I loved his Boston accent. We interviewed Doug Flutie, and then also Kieth Lockheart, the director of the Boston Pops orchestra because we collaborated with them for Pops on the Heights. Then, for the Thanksgiving episode, we [interviewed] some BC alumni, where they are at right now, and they actually participated in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, so they were able to talk about that. We also interviewed Kylo Ren for Halloween. Interesting conversationalist. For our last interview, which I really enjoyed, I got to interview Santa, which was very special for me. So we just got to have a lot of fun with [Showtime] too.

What about the music videos being made? What is it like to make those for such a large BC organization

This was all birthed out of the difficulty of COVID and us wanting to still produce our halftime shows and get those out there. Over COVID, it was way more difficult, individually playing and editing, and then we had an in-person recording session that actually took place at the Waterworks Museum down by the Res, so it looks kind of steampunk, which is cool. When we did that, we really didn't know what we were doing, but it turned out great and we loved being able to tap into stuff like BTS fans. With the Phantom of the Opera, we could tap into Theater fans. What that looked like was a lot of individually recorded playing. Later that year, we did a collaboration with the Notre Dame Marching Band with a StarTrek Halftime Show that we've arranged. Moving digitally, as soon as we came out with the music video we were like "Ok, now we have to beef up everything else around it". We're still trying to work on how to really capitalize on media presence. How do you build hype for a video, how do you get ready for a release? Making our music available on Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube. Then, going into this year, we wanted to still have our regular halftime shows but also still have those music videos as well, which we are also going to do with both of our halftime shows next year, which is going to be really exciting.  

I heard that there was a more recent collaboration with Jason Derulo. Could you talk about that?

We were looking at our email, and we saw that it was announced that Jason Derulo was playing at Marathon Monday. Obviously, he has a song, "Trumpets", and we were thinking "Well, we have trumpets". We're always looking to do the next thing, to do more collaborations, we're even already looking ahead to next Fall, so I sent an email to the director like "Hey, lets get on this. Let's do this". People talked that were more important than me, and we were able to have a dress rehearsal with him the night before which was so awesome. We were able to perform with him on stage, and that was something else. Standing on stage and having all the screaming was like "Oh my gosh! I'm a rockstar." Really neat tidbit: one of our sousaphone players actually was asked to do a separate recording with Mr. Derulo, so we'll see where that goes. It's interesting how these doors open up and how we were able to do these things. Jason Derulo's staff loved us, and when we went on stage, I could hear the fans screaming. It was just a blast.

What would you say your biggest influence or influences in the creation of music videos and Showtime was?

I'd have to say it's our members. Honestly. Talking with our members, having people pull up videos, whether it's marching bands doing different marches on YouTube or having members pull up different songs that they want as shorties or halftime music. I think our members really push the creativity of what we can do, and so even right now with the music videos, we are able to innovate with that. Going forward, we had members that [asked] why don't we have TikTok, and then we just made a TikTok. Now we have a TikTok. It's stuff like that—where our members are the real inspiration—that gives us that creative edge. As far as music videos go, we can't really look to other marching bands to see who's doing that because no one else is. We like to really be the innovators of what a band can do. 

How haven you guys helped create a community amongst the entire band? Looking at your past three years with the BCMB, do you feel like you've contributed to that?

I think so. The big thing for us as a group is band camp. I don't want to talk about band camp too much—I know the cliches—, but it's like, you know, mutual suffering tougher. It brings everybody together, and it's an interesting social phenomenon that you can bring in a bunch of people who don'ts know each other, especially this year where we had over half the ensemble not know or march at all: how we're able to bring people together. Within a week, we were making connections and building relationships. For my own part, I like to host little things, whether they are like movie nights. One of the things we did was called 'Mike's Mocks'. I'm gonna call it cool, just because we have a lot of underclassmen in the band, and we want to make sure everyone has the chance to do something. I just wanted to make sure everyone had an open invite to my dorm, and I had a little Mocktail Set and a little Mocktail book, so we had people over and we played games and I'd make Mocktails. That was just a fun thing that happened a lot at the beginning of last semester that I think everybody really liked. We try to have gatherings outside of rehearsal as well, whether it's with your one section in particular or just with any group that is available. 

Us at the Arts Journal are grateful for the opportunity to interview Michael Pelosi and get to know more about him and the Arts On Campus.

Edited by: Sindey Amar 24’