SAM 250 Projects

Motivated by the sociocultural and economic impacts that the Palisades and Altadena fires of January 2025 had on the greater Los Angeles (LA) area, Firebirth: Kindling the Sounds of Resilience in Los Angeles will offer a community-oriented space for UCLA students, faculty, staff, and residents of the surrounding area to critically reflect on the sounds of LA after such fires. The event will also act as a site of education and healing prompted by hearing from those who study and engage with fire ecology. This event will center around a new composition for violin and piano, Firebirth, composed by Will Rand (b. 1999). Firebirth is a part of a commission project entitled “Resilience Sounds” intended to explore the relationship between music, the natural world, and communities within it. Composer Will Rand and violinist Grace M. Alexander will offer this work as a performance and will be present to discuss their experiences and perspectives on this composition. Alongside the performance will be a discussion of fire ecology, safety and community (re)building after the devastation of the LA fires framed by perspectives solicited from government employees for the City of Los Angeles and graduate students from UCLA in musicology and environmental science or ecology, including a talk by Michele Yamamoto who recently gave a paper on this at the 2025 American Musicological Society Annual Meeting. This event will also be taped live for a podcast episode for the organization, EarthStory, which seeks to raise awareness of the interconnections between living beings through ecologically-inspired storytelling, song and communal gathering. Ultimately, it is the goal of this project to incorporate interdisciplinary modes of thinking, visual and performing arts, and multiple modalities of presentation and community-based teaching in order to foster a space of action, healing, and reflection for the broader Los Angeles community.

About the presenters
Emmie Head (she/her) is a PhD student in UCLA’s Department of Musicology. She holds a B.A. in music from St. Olaf College and an M.A. in musicology from UCLA. Emmie’s recent academic work has focused on the ways in which intellectual property policy and developing music technologies like AI challenge and complicate conceptions of musical ownership. Emmie’s dissertation project is poised to exist at the intersection of US intellectual property policy, artificial intelligence, and music making — asking how it is that regulatory powers such as the law or corporations directly impact the musical ecosystems of the country. Emmie has presented her work at the AMS – Midwest chapter, the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, Music and the Moving Image, and the First International Conference on the Study of Music and AI in Stockholm. In addition to her work as a musicologist, Emmie teaches flute lessons on a volunteer basis to increase access to quality instrumental music education for those who are underserved in classical music communities. When not musicking, Emmie can be found baking pastries for her big Greek family or hanging with her miniature dachshunds Mr. Peabody, Dobby, and Fig Newton.

Michele Yamamoto (she/her) is both a musicology scholar and a human-focused administrator within mission-driven organizations. Her research interests include the role of popular music in the development of self-identity, cultural identity, and other conceptual social frameworks. She is especially interested in arts justice and the way music and sounds enter and evolve within marginalized communities. Other research interests include politics, human geography, music and space/place, and sound studies. She holds an MA in musicology from California State University, Long Beach (2022) and a BA in Music History from UCLA (2009).

In partnership with
The UCLA Walter H. Rubsamen Music Library, Davise Fund
The Center for Musical Humanities at UCLA