03 Music
Drums, mostly. A band that wrote thirty songs, a few pits, a few honor ensembles, and a handful of stages that were far nicer than a high schooler deserves.
Band 2022–Present
Co-founder · drummer · composer · co-producer
A band that started with a middle-school promotion performance and did not stop — thirty-odd original songs, a thirteen-track debut album called The Cyclist, and a lot of night markets in between.
↳How the band happened
Playing the eighth-grade promotion at South Point Middle School — the band's first performance. Kaitlyn Shuffer, Miles Nguyen, Austin To and Jalen Cai, with a set that included "You'll Be Back" from Hamilton, "Eye of the Tiger" and "Bohemian Rhapsody".
The band's first self-organised show, played in Jalen's backyard.
Multiple night market performances, grouped together here because they became a regular thing. Several of them counted as community service.
A Moon Festival performance for elderly attendees in the local community.
Thirty-plus originals written as a group, which mostly means thirty-plus rounds of changing something until everyone can hear the same song.
A thirteen-song debut album, released 1 December 2025.
Shaping arrangements, comparing takes, thinking about transitions and pacing — the part nobody sees.
↳Performance reel
04Places music has taken me
05 School & performance
The most consistent home for my classical percussion playing — and a very different discipline from drum set.
Unlike drum set, where the pulse is always visible, concert percussion can mean waiting dozens of measures for a single entrance and then needing that one sound to be exactly right. I liked that combination of patience and precision, and over time it became the foundation for most of my school and honor-ensemble playing.
Invisible from the audience, and completely responsible for whether the show holds together. Shows so far: Wonderland (Pilot Production) and Beetlejuice (High School Version).
Playing in a pit orchestra felt completely different from a normal concert. The music had to follow actors, dialogue, scene changes, and whatever happened onstage that night. It made percussion feel less like performing a fixed part and more like supporting a moving system — listening constantly, reacting quickly, and knowing when the best contribution was to disappear into the production.
Shows: Wonderland: Pilot Production · Beetlejuice: High School Version
A chance to play outside a single ensemble format — larger productions and collaborative performances with musicians, actors and other performers.
The Performing Arts Academy gave me a chance to play outside a single ensemble format, working across larger productions and collaborative performances with musicians, actors, and other performers. It became one of the places where I learned to think less about “my part” and more about how percussion fits into the entire performance.
One of the places where I had to loosen my grip on the page — listening mattered as much as reading.
Compared with concert percussion, the part could feel less predetermined, and listening mattered as much as reading. Even when jazz did not become my main musical lane, it changed the way I approached groove, dynamics, and reacting to the people playing around me.
06 All-State / All-Southern
Auditioning into the California All-State ensemble — the one where you find out exactly how large the state is.
First time through the SCSBOA All-Southern Symphony Orchestra audition — and first time sitting in a percussion section made entirely of people who also practised too much.
A second year in the SCSBOA All-Southern Symphony Orchestra, which is a very different experience when you already know what the week is going to ask of you.