Meet Omeed Almassi

Today we’d like to introduce you to Omeed Almassi.

Omeed, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I’ve always been involved in music. I started with some early childhood classes at my music school, the Colburn School, in downtown. In those classes, we learned how to play instruments like the ukulele and the recorder. Then, when I was five I decided I wanted to play the cello, which I still play today. In that time, I also took other classes at Colburn, like conducting and music theory. So, I’m a classically trained musician. But, in the summer of 2017 I started fooling around on Garage Band. I wasn’t even really making songs, pretty much just sounds. In about a year, I decided that music was what I wanted to do with my life. I decided to change schools to be somewhere I could really train myself to become a proper music producer and artist. So, halfway through my freshman year, I moved to Hamilton High School where I joined the music tech department.

At Hamilton, I discovered that they had a student-led record label and I knew I had to be apart of it. I auditioned and got accepted and today, I am the Vice President, as well as an artist. I would say my main accomplishment was co-creating the LA-based arts event “La Pascua”. When I really started making music, I had this idea to do some sort of an album release party (for an album that wasn’t even started yet) where all my friends could come and listen to my music and just have a good time. But, of course, I was inexperienced, lacking the proper resources, and honestly I didn’t even know where to start. In the end of my freshman year, I met my best friend Dov Sikowitz. We started talking about our goals and ideas and realized that a lot of them were very similar. So in the middle of our sophomore year, we decided to commit to doing an event where we could showcase not only our own work but the work of all of our friends as well.

At that point, it was still just an idea. But, in just 3-4 months, La Pascua took place and our vision came true. Through the process of putting that event on, I learned so much and both Dov and I decided that we want to make this an annual thing for as long as we can. I have just released my debut EP and have much more on the way.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I am and I will always be grateful for everything I have and have had. Sometimes, living in LA, it’s easy to take certain things for granted. Experiences such as being able to be apart of a record label in the comfort of my own school, having access to music lessons from a really young age, and having the resources to make my own event. Encounters like these are easy to find in LA but I acknowledge that that is not the case in most other places in the world. So, in that regard, it has been a relatively smooth road. Of course, there have been many bumps along the way. Financially, I can’t complain, but at the same time, my situation has forced me to work harder in most of my endeavors. All of my music knowledge and experiences have only been possible through scholarships and grants.

When I started getting really serious about cello, my mom and I realized that the classes were getting too expensive and we couldn’t handle the financial pressures it was putting on us. Lucky enough, that same year, my music school announced a new full scholarship. So I auditioned and didn’t receive it. That was pretty devastating for my family. We knew that if I didn’t get it the next year, I probably would have to discontinue my studies at the Colburn School. So I worked my ass off for the entirety of that year. When the audition was opened the next year, I knew that it was do or die. I received the scholarship and it has enabled me to continue my music education to this day and to the end of my high school experience. Keep in mind, I was just 11 years old when all of that happened. Although it was difficult, going through not receiving the scholarship the first time around, that experience has instilled into me the concept of hard work. From that day on, I knew that if I wanted something, it wasn’t going to just come to me.

Can you give our readers some background on your music?
My main focus is my own music. At times, being an independent musician, especially in LA, it can be hard to stand out. With my music, my focus is to be different when it comes to my sound and message. I realize that literally everyone who thinks they’re a musician says that. Everyone wants to be different. But that’s just the challenge that I love and live for. And yes, I recognize that I am capable of taking the easy way of making crowd pleasing songs and follow the algorithm of “making a hit”. But music, to me, is deeper than that. Music has always been and will always be the main focus in my life. I wasn’t raised religious which never gave me a group ideology to follow. It forced me to have my own opinions. But what I’ve realized is that music is my religion. I can imagine that the feeling I get from listening to music is similar to the feeling someone gets when they pray. Creating and listening to music gives me all the strength and motivation that I need to live my life. When I created my event, “La Pascua” with my friend Dov, I started to get the same feeling that I thought was only accessible through music.

At some point, we realized that most of our friends were young creatives, just like ourselves. Dov and I made Music, some of our friends had clothing lines, some photographers, and even some visual artists. We knew that if we were going to do an event, we needed to find a way to incorporate all of this. Now, doing this on a short budget was not easy, especially because dov and I vowed to do everything ourselves. We did this because we knew that this was the beginning of something special and we needed to make sure that we learned a lot. We knew that we’d be doing it again. We found a small art gallery space in Korea Town and figured out how to transform it into our ideal venue. The capacity was 100 people which, at the time, was pretty ambitious. But, we knew that if we combined all of our followings, we could make it happen. Sure enough, we sold out and then some. Now, we are working on putting on “La Pascua II”. Although this virus isn’t making it the smoothest process, we’re working through it. Pascua was created as, and will always be, some friends who love what they do and kill it at their craft, taking one night to put it all together. The venues, the money, and the scale may change, but the art and vision will always remain the same.

Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
At this point in my life, a very important skill that I have is my ability to be in touch with myself. When it comes to decisions for myself and my career, I believe I have very good judgment. But this was definitely not something I was born with. This has come to me through many failures and mistakes. I recall one specific occasion. When I was about 14, I started to write some of my first original songs. I had many ideas which, at the time, I thought were quite exceptional (I was wrong). The only problem was I lacked the proper skills and resources to make them into real songs. So, I found an independent music producer online and started inquiring. He told me that a session would run me $60 an hour. This was doable for me. He then told me that each song would cost me 3 ($300) but if we did two songs it would cost me 5 ($500). I thought, what an amazing deal, $5! So, I scraped my money together and headed to the studio. You can imagine how the rest went. Anyway, the reason I tell this story is to show the lessons I learned. Not only will that specific mistake never happen again, but that experience taught me to really think about certain decisions before I make them. It is lessons like these that have given me my strong intuition and my desire to learn as much as I possibly can.

Contact Info:

• Website: lapascua.net
• Email: [email protected]
• Other: https://linktr.ee/Omeed

Image Credit:
Adali Schell, Robby Piantanida, Gari Lamar Askew

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