SFCM Students Debut Ambitious Multidisciplinary ‘Art Is’ Showcase, Prep Second for Fall
The students, from the Composition, Violin, and Technology and Applied Composition Department, put together a show incorporating dance, poetry, and visual art.
From left: Thomas Stenzel, Brayden Meng, Eddie Chen, Peyton Dexter, and
Four SFCM students are remaking San Francisco’s live performance landscape, one ambitious show at a time.
Art Is, an interactive multimedia performance series, is the brainchild of SFCM students Peyton Dexter, Brayden Meng, Zeke Sokoloff, and Thomas Stenzel. The four come from different departments at SFCM: Dexter and Meng are both composition students studying with Mason Bates, Sokoloff studies violin with Strings Chair Simon James, and Stenzel is a Technology and Applied Composition (TAC) student.
The four fleshed out their idea for Art Is’ inaugural performance over SFCM’s 2025 Winter Term, SFCM’s annual period during which professors can pitch courses that fall outside of students’ normal curriculum, and—or, as the Art Is students did, pitch projects they’d like to develop. Developing the idea from there, Dexter, Meng, Solokoff, and Stenzel held a “soft launch” of their concept, held as a recital at SFCM in spring 2025 and are now planning another event at the Conservatory in September.
Meng and Sokoloff at the spring 2025 Art Is performance.
“The spring show was our proof of concept,” Meng says, “and also for us as a team to really refine our process. We took our much broader pitch and crunched it down to its minimum form that still got across what we wanted to. So we're expanding that direction, but we just found what our ‘minimum viable product’ was.”
The group’s plan was a multidisciplinary, interactive event that involved live music, art, dance, and food, which, when they budgeted it out, came in with an estimated cost of $17,000. But the actual cost of the event was around $2,000 instead, thanks to the enthusiastic support of the community. “One huge thing that surprised me was just how interested artists were in a project like this,” Meng says. “Even people who weren't part of it were already vouching, ‘I want to be a part of this next year, I really want to see what this is all about.’ And for the artists who were involved, what also surprised me was the level of commitment and the work they put in, despite this not being a paid job. But nevertheless every artist that came and worked with us put in 110%.”
SFCM Humanities Chair Nikolaus Hohmann even participated as narrator, and Stenzel had a friend who arranged for drinks and food at the show’s after-party.
“We had just the one rehearsal on Saturday and then the show on Sunday,” Sokoloff says, “and of course there was so much stuff to move around, all of the different props and elements, so it was a little bit on the fly, but everything went as planned. We got a great reaction as far as people enjoying the show and interest from other groups, so it’s looking positive.”
Members of the larger Bay Area community were involved as well. Eddie Chen, who met Sokoloff years ago via the YoungArts competition, anchored the dance portion of the production. “I just messaged him and much instantaneously he was like, ‘Yeah, that sounds awesome, I'd love to do that.’ And he came down, came to the rehearsal, did the show, did extra filming with our videographer.”
Art Is' spring 2025 performance at SFCM.
Art Is' spring 2025 performance at SFCM.
ArtIs is a pending 501(c)(3) organization, and Meng also has plans to develop an app for the group that will serve as not only a source of information about performances, but as a hub for musicians involved to network and plan their own events under the Art Is umbrella.
“This is a really collaborative concept,” Meng says. “We’re aiming to have a process where we secure a venue and then accept applications first for a director and then musicians and other team members to pull it off. The idea is to end up where it's not just the four of us creatively directing everything, but a continuous process of bringing in people from all different places and backgrounds to create a variety of different shows and experiences each time we do something.”
Dexter, Meng, Sokoloff and Stenzel haven’t wasted any time since their soft launch, and are already planning a more elaborate performance at SFCM in fall of 2025. “I’ve seen many more interdisciplinary productions recently,” Stenzel said. “That idea is growing, and in a city like San Francisco, a forward-thinking place, this kind of project is very much needed.”