Brad Valentine woos crowds with music

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Photo courtesy of Brad Valentine

Valentine practices the vibraphone for his piece in the music room.

Playing the drums, percussion, piano, guitar and the cello, being a talented composer of almost 43 songs, senior Brad Valentine has always had a fortè for music with the talent to play the drums.

Valentine wanted to pursue a career in science, but upon entering high school, he noticed his hobby was very demanding and could be a viable career. He realized his future would definitely involve music.

“It started to come to the point where I thought, I can’t keep doing honors, APs and music, so I had to think about it a lot and how I was affecting people with my music,” Valentine said.

Although Valentine continues to take these rigorous courses, he focuses more on his music.

“I have always valued education and the idea of expanding your knowledge; I don’t only want to [learn] about music,” Valentine said.

Valentine now plans to pursue a career in music and and hopes to attend the University of Southern California.

“I am applying for music composition, so I had to submit three pieces of recordings and scores,” Valentine said. “USC is really tough to get into; they only accept zero to eight students from the thousands that apply a year.”

Valentine worked tirelessly to perfect his recordings and asked family members to help him raise money to hire musicians who could play the music he composed.

“I hired the musicians because the songs have more than one instrument. I could play some of the parts, but I want to be able to direct it as well,” Valentine said.

On Valentine’s SoundCloud, fans can listen to his original score for the short film “City Limits,” for which Valentine won Best Original Film Score in the 2014 Orange County Film Festival. Valentine has had much popularity, with his tracks averaging around 200 plays for each song. His song “Find Me,” featuring his sister, junior Claire Valentine, has 940 plays.

“Brad is a phenomenal musician. Brad not only knows what sounds good, but he feels the music and he connects to it on a deeper level, that I only wish I could begin to comprehend,” junior Dan Lesser said. “Brad has rhythm in his heart, and he embeds his heart and soul into every single note. Brad is the kind of guy that can listen to a song and tell you exactly what the artist meant. He is so in tune with music that when he’s playing you can see a concentration and connection with him and the instruments and other musicians.”

Hard work and passion have led Valentine to great achievements. Valentine has been nominated as the Orange County Artist of the Year, where the Woodbridge staff recommends a few students they believe have made remarkable achievements in their art.

“He is a terrific writer, and he is working really hard on getting his college applications done,” performing arts teacher Brad Harris said.

He has also been nominated for best film score in the 2015 Orange County Film Festival, and on Dec. 12 both Valentine siblings won most popular and the entire show at the Akustikoff held by Youth Action Team.

“I realized that [music] creates a new sense of perspective, and you can learn a lot by listening to music. It’s kind of like literature; like, why do we study literature? It’s because we learn about experiences. When you read a story, you learn about that person’s perspective, and you have a new sense of empathy. When people listen to my music, they can try to formulate the experience I had behind [the music] and relate to it,” Valentine said.