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Congratulations 2018 Graduates
You've inspired us and we will miss you. We wish you every success in the future and expect no less than great things from each of you. We send you off to the next chapter with all our love.
We want to thank our beloved flutist Grace Dessert for her sincere and heartfelt shout out to Young Lions given live at Panama 66. Grace will be studying at Duke University this fall. Watch the video below:
Next year I am off to Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. I plan to study Neuroscience and Music on a premed track.
Young Lions has taught me how to be confident in my playing and, under the guidance of Gilbert, I have grown tremendously as a musician. I am so grateful for my experience in Young Lions and for all the wonderful musicians and people I have had the pleasure of playing with.
I will be attending the New School in Manhattan, studying jazz and contemporary music. I have learned too much in Young Lions to describe in just a few sentences, but it introduced me to a wonderful community of musicians who are now my best friends and favorite people to play with. My life would be very different, and not quite so happy if I had not joined Young Lions.
Jason Picker is a senior at Canyon Crest Academy in San Diego and is the pianist in Gilbert Castellanos's 11am ensemble. He has been playing jazz since the 7th grade and has become an active member of the San Diego jazz community. Jason was the pianist for the 2018 Jazz Band of America, a 2018 YoungArts Winner, a 2018 GRAMMY Band Finalist, and a University of North Carolina Kenan Scholar Finalist. In August he will attend the USC Thornton School of Music on a full tuition Trustee Scholarship. His primarily emphasis will be in jazz performance but he will also study jazz composition, film scoring and business administration. The Young Lions Program has provided Jason with the amazing opportunity to connect with other young musicians in the San Diego area who share his passion for jazz. He truly appreciates the guidance and friendship of Gilbert Castellanos, the Young Lions staff, and his fellow Young Lions. He looks forward to remaining an active part of this wonderful community.
Nick is headed to Boston in the fall to major in Jazz Studies at New England Conservatory.
Young Lions, especially the gigs at Panama 66, have taught him leadership, professionalism and responsibility. It is one thing for musicians to play a set list that their instructor provides them. But Young Lions encourages its musicians to collaborate and develop their own set list for these gigs. To see how well the students accomplish this and turn out an amazing show is impressive and will serve them well in their adult lives whether they pursue music, business, or any other profession.
Jiakai Chang is honored and thankful to have been a part of Young Lions this year. He will be attending Northwestern University in the fall, though he is yet to decide his major. But whatever he decides, he knows he will definitely take his trombone with him. Thank you to Rob for being the best, kindest, most hipster teacher he's ever had, and thank you to Young Lions for the opportunity to play with some of the best jazz musicians in town.
After graduation I will be studying jazz guitar at DePaul University. The Young Lions Jazz Conservatory has provided me an educational opportunity that I could not have gotten anywhere else in San Diego. Young Lions draws great musicians, so I had the opportunity to play with great student players. The environment is encouraging and brings out the best in all of us. The caliber of instructors is the best. We also got great opportunities to gig, including playing the Copley Symphony Hall lobby for Jazz at the Jacobs events and the Monterrey Next Generation Jazz Festival.
I will be going to college at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. At Eastman I will be majoring in jazz saxophone with a planned minor in classical composition. By participating in Young Lions I have increased my knowledge of the jazz form in improvisation and in group playing. Working and learning under mentors Rob Thorsen and Gilbert Castellanos has really transformed my playing, taking it to a new level.
I have been playing alto saxophone since the 5th grade. I first decided that I wanted to play jazz when I met Gilbert Castellanos at a production of Federal Jazz Project. I'm planning to go to City College and transfer to University College Cork for Archaeology. It was an honor to have the opportunities presented to me by the Conservatory, and I believe that the musical skills I have learned will impact me for the rest of my life.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
"the one thing in life that will make you
less happy is having children"
relationships • 11.06.08
Raising children is probably the most important job there is. If you bring kids into the world, either by accident or design, I say that is what you are doing. You may still think you are doing something else and the children are additional but I say you are first and foremost a parent. All else follows suit. From then on your identity and your responsibility are primarily tied to parenthood.
This is especially so currently when the demands of the brood are endless. Enough is never enough. Parents are run ragged trying to give the kids everything. They want them to have every opportunity in life so that their options are maximised. It is an impossible task with questionable issues attaching to the whole business of having too much.
Having it all has been the mantra for women in recent times. Having it all is plainly not possible. I don't say this from holding outdated man-values. I am at the head of the march for the emancipation of women. They too often enslave themselves in my view. No, the limitations are set by the laws of physics. Quantum mechanics aside, two things can't be in the same place at the same time. While you are pursuing a big career, you are not with the kids. Pure and simple. You may well be blessed with great energy levels as some are and can handle both jobs but even then there will still be sacrifice. In stress if nothing else. The more responsibility, the more stress. A price is paid sooner or later. Or you might be a wealthy or a powerful woman which gives you more scope. You can pay for high quality back up. But the vast majority do not have that kind of resource. For them the need to be in two places at one time is a major challenge.
(BTW - In focussing my attention on women here I'm recognising it is the women who actually have the babies, whose minds and bodies are taken over in service to childbirth and the fallout from it. A man may be involved but he is by comparison an onlooker. He is relatively remote from the experience and not subject to the same psychological conflicts.)
The status of women in society needed addressing. They fought to be freed from the shackles of being only homemakers, a huge job which had come to be trivialised and undervalued. That it is now easier for women to work alongside men on equal terms was a well overdue event. Some would say it still has a long way to go but at least the process is underway. But the solution has been patchy. It is questionable whether the overall well-being of women has been suitably served by a have-it-all ethos in which motherhood remains centrally important.
So what would be a better solution? I think that as women and men you choose between either family life or society life. Straddling both is too much a stretch. Women who push themselves through the trials of a demanding job should do that. Just the job. Those who choose family should sacrifice career in favour of the home. Men likewise should curtail their ambitions and outside responsibilities to accommodate family demands. Until more radical ways are evolved for the raising of children I suggest that is the best compromise. You are either a family person or a society person. Make the choice.
What might the more radical options be? My feeling is that ordinary mortals should not be parents at all. In the future children might be raised professionally using all the knowledge and psychological insight that can be mustered. Traditionally parenting has been a job badly done resulting in poor inheritance. The ensuing problems got passed down the generations unchecked. Raising children professionally would be about producing strongly constituted individuals, physically and psychologically, able to contribute to a better functioning society. We are not close to this. Family life too often compounds emotional ills.
Healthy societies would have these long-standing issues addressed and applied to the optimum in their social structures. Children reared professionally in genuinely enlightened environments would be less needy, would have fewer psychological problems, and be much better able to deal with the trials of life. I think they would also have better capacity for relationship. Strong individuals are needed for good relationships. Given that bad relationships are the source of all conflicts including wars then healthy associations are the best elixir for a peaceful world.
What is outlined here is a radical but reasonable trajectory for the future improvement of human congress. Of course the current culture with its long history will hate such a concept so wedded is it to its conventions. People cling to what they know especially when it is attended with big emotion. They have always done that. And always time supersedes them.
I read a piece in The New York Times quoting academic Betsey Stevenson who said: "Across the happiness data, the one thing in life that will make you less happy is having children." There won't be many mothers I imagine prepared to say that too loudly. Perhaps they should.
And if Stevenson's remarks aren't off-putting enough, try Nirpal Dhaliwal in the Sunday Times last year. His comments about yummy mummies are extreme but the false impression given by the yummies about parenting is something that wants to be shot down and Dhaliwal doesn't miss and hit the wall.