NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The Berkshires' Academy for Advanced Musical Studies will premier a student-written song "These Four Walls" that reflects frustrations felt during the pandemic.

 

"Just being in the house through quarantine and being stuck inside surrounded by walls — it all just made me anxious to get out," songwriter Braden Collins said. "It is all about being locked up and not being able to go out and talk to people. It is about being away from other people." 

 

The idea came out of a Berkshires' Academy for Advanced Musical Studies (BAAMS) Zoom lesson between Collins, a drummer and piano player, and BAAMS Executive Director Richard Boulger. Collins, now a senior at Drury High School, shared the frustration he had felt over the past few years with the pandemic limiting time with friends and family and dampening his high school experience.

 

Collins said Boulger encouraged him to explore these feelings through music.

 

"I sat down at my piano, and I just laid out a few chords that I came up with," he said. "I kept going with it, and I felt that this song really needed to be about the pandemic and everything I have been feeling for the past six months." 

 

A cornerstone of BAAMS instruction is to teach young musicians how to channel emotion through their instruments and use it to amplify what they are feeling inside.

 

"We teach each of our students how to take their authentic, one-of-a-kind life experiences and emotions and transform them into their own original music and unique musical expressions," Boulger said. "... We teach children to ask themselves, 'What does sadness and isolation sound like? What does joy and hope sound like?' Once young musicians learn this, it's a skill they'll have with them for the rest of their lives, to be able to express their own emotions and life's experiences musically."

 

Boulger said through the writing process, Collins began to accept that it was necessary to keep himself and his own family safe, despite missing all of his normal life and social interactions with friends, classmates, teachers at school.

 

He added that it also gave Collins a better understanding of the recording process. He said BAAMS is teaching students how to record themselves remotely and share tracks with fellow BAAMS students throughout Berkshire County and the world — an important skill in the post-pandemic world for a musician.

 

The song was written over a series of weekly afterschool zoom sessions. The song started off with some lyrics that inspired a melody and chords. In the fall students and faculty collaborated and recorded the song.

 

The ballad features BAAMS faculty including Boulger on vocals and trumpet, David Gilmore on guitar, and Charles Blenzig on piano. Boulger said it as a haunting song that rightly reflects it's inspiration.

 

Collins said the pandemic has been hard for musicians who have been unable to play together and collaborate. He said it was a welcome return to normalcy to collaborate with other musicians again.

 

"As a musician being able to go out and connect with other musicians is so important and when a virus like this hits you are just stuck inside," Collins said. "All musicians just want to go out and perform and for a while, we couldn't do that."  

 

He added that it was amazing to hear something he created put together and recorded by a group of world class, professional musicians. 

 

"I think being able to listen to something that you created and getting other people involved in is a great feeling," Collins said.

 

Collins, who is primarily a drummer, is fairly new to songwriting but already has a few arrangements under his belt. As a multi-instrumentalist, he said each discipline informs the other.

 

"Each instrument you play — the drums or the piano — you can go from one to the other," he said. "You can get more musical on the drums once you start playing more piano, and you can be more rhythmic on the piano if you are a drummer."

 

He admitted it is different being in the spotlight because as a drummer he is often in the back holding the band together but, a drummer to his core, those steady, metrical tendencies are part of everything he composes or plays.

 

"As the drummer, you are seen as the guy in the back, and I have always enjoyed that," he said. "But I noticed no matter what I am playing that I am always keeping the beat. With the piano there is more attention on you but…as the drummer it is nice to know that you are keeping time, getting everything together, and keeping it steady." 

 

The song will be shared for the first time on Dec. 21 during BAAMS' Winter Solstice Celebration that will begin at 8 pm. It will feature interviews, recordings, and opportunities to donate to the music school. 

 

"I hope people will listen to this and understand what I went through. I feel like a lot of other people have felt some of the same things that I have expressed in this song," Collins said. "I want them to understand this, and I think they will."

 

The live streaming event can be found on BAAMS' website on Dec. 21 and is made possible through a Mass Cultural Council Grant.