Linda and Carlos LeGerrette<\/a>, known in San Diego for their organized labor activism during the early 1970s. Their entire lives are deeply rooted in the Chicano community; the two started C\u00e9sar Ch\u00e1vez clubs in San Diego and have been politically active for decades. <\/p>\nThe movie, which was initially completed by Saiz in 2023, includes all-new, original music by music department students at Mission Bay High.<\/p>\n
In March 2025, Linda LeGerrette contacted JP Balmat, music director at Mission Bay, after seeing his student musicians performing at one of the Meraki concerts in South Park. Balmat and the music program\u2019s assistant, Eric Wesling, met with the director, and the educational collaboration started to blossom.<\/p>\n
At the screening on Feb. 4, Saiz told the story of Linda LeGerrette\u2019s idea of using high school musicians for this project.<\/p>\n
\u201cI told Linda\u2026these are just high school kids\u2026they have never composed before. But if any of you know Linda, once she sets her mind to something\u2026\u201d A ripple of laughter went through the audience.<\/p>\n
Wesling became the artistic director and recruited the after-school music composition club at Mission Bay into the project. The composition club is a group of music students who, in addition to improving their performance skills, have a unique interest in writing original music.<\/p>\n
Wesling selected senior Elias Nuspl as the assistant artistic director and was joined by six other club members to compose the score: Brady Newell, trumpet; Henry Hartnack, drums; Abby Hope, viola; Lina Hope, vibraphone; Aleksander Virre, drums; and Joseph Khoury, pianist. The club met once a week after school from April to May in 2025 and then throughout the summer to complete the project.<\/p>\n
Pianist Khoury said that Wesling met with Saiz and showed a copy of the original movie to the composition club so they would understand the purpose of the movie and experience the flow and the tone of the movie, then club members received smaller sections or chunks of the movie and were given notes on what type or style of music was needed in a particular section of the movie.<\/p>\n
Violist Abby Hope added, \u201cSome sections or scenes in the movie called for perhaps 30 to 45 seconds of uplifting or joyful music; another clip or scene called for thoughtful or more reflective music. Eric would critique our work, and in a very collaborative way, we arrived at a finished score.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThese composition club members successfully scored at least 20 sections or scenes of music by our final recording session last August,\u201d Wesling said.<\/p>\n
In addition to the composition club, three additional Mission Bay musicians were invited to participate with the final recording: Seniors Alyssa Deaton, flute; Ian Steinberger, violin; and Alexander Flores, piano. A fourth guest musician, Julian Esparza, a professional bassist, was also added for the recording sessions. <\/p>\n
The final recording was made in August at Studio West in Poway.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was so impressed with the recording process,\u201d Deaton said. \u201cI had never been in a professional recording studio before.\u201d<\/p>\n
Flores added, \u201cI appreciated being asked to play for the final recording. It was an exhilarating experience being in a professional studio.\u201d<\/p>\n
Student musician Nupsl, who served as the project\u2019s assistant artistic director and videographer, also introduced a mini-documentary explaining and illustrating the composing and recording process of the original score. Then student musicians took to the stage, and under the direction of Balmat, played various sections of the score that were used in the final film. <\/p>\n
The 300-plus member audience gave the student ensemble a loud and rousing ovation at the end of their performance.<\/p>\n
The documentary will be shown on KPBS at 8:30 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 26.<\/p>\n
READ NEXT\n\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PACIFIC BEACH \u2013 Mission Bay High has gone Hollywood. Kind of. Students there have created a new musical…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172472,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[82570,16847,78890,82571,82572,37630,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-172471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-carlos-legerrette","tag-cesar-chavez","tag-jp-balmat","tag-linda-and-carlos-a-chicano-love-story","tag-linda-legerrette","tag-mission-bay-high","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}