Episode 15: Trace Gaynor | The Accidental Musician
One day in April 2013, I met up with these random guys that I had never met before at a place in Hollywood. We sang some songs and sent an audition tape in. Fast forward five years later, I'm still in that group with those random guys.
Below is an abridged audio transcript of Episode 15, lightly edited for clarity.
This week we feature Trace Gaynor from The Filharmonic! You may have heard of the group from the TV show, The Sing Off. They also made a cameo in Pitch Perfect 2.
Lucia: I love today’s guest because I’ve been a long time fan of a cappella groups like the Pentatonics & Pitch Perfect. Fun fact, I met my husband at an informal a cappella group in NY.
Lynne: Did he woo you with his angelic voice?
Lucia: Of course he did :)
Lynne: Another fun fact about Trace: he majored in Broadcast & Digital Journalism at the University of Southern California. We were just at the Annenberg school a month ago sitting with the AAJA college group there. Shout-out to the group for hosting us, especially the organizers Eric and Mindy!
Lucia: Trace was actually very intent on pursuing a career in journalism. When he was 14, he and his friend created a short documentary called Genie in a Bottle: Unleashed, which won first place for child-produced films at the 2006 Chicago International Children's Film Festival. We’ll talk about the premise of that video later in this episode.
Lynne: Trace is a tenor in The Filharmonic, an all Filipino a capella group. He’s also the media director of the group, which means he helps manage the group's social media and also produces their music videos. He’s putting his media degree to good use.
Lucia: The group has gone on two national tours, made a cameo appearance in Universal’s Pitch Perfect 2, and has a recurring role on The Late Late Show with James Corden. The Filharmonic has shared the stage with acts such as Shawn Mendes, Liam Payne, Future, Fifth Harmony, Pentatonix, Black Eyed Peas, Linkin Park, Usher, & Jamie Foxx.
In this episode, we speak with Trace about:
Growing up in a primarily white neighborhood ,
Observing his identity as half white and half Filipino,
His love for storytelling ,
Rediscovering his Filipino Roots after joining The Filharmonic , and
His next steps towards going back into journalism through MyxTV .
I. Trace’s Origin Story
Trace: My name is Trace Gaynor. I am a member of the Filipino American vocal group The Filharmonic. I work a lot with MyxTV. I do a lot of broadcast journalism stuff and have been a creator in Los Angeles, California for the past eight years.
I am from the western suburbs of Chicago, a town called Elmhurst, which is about 15 miles west of the city. I am half Filipino, half white. I grew up pretty much entirely in a white neighborhood. And so I didn't really know anything about Filipino culture or my ethnic background until I left Elmhurst.
Lucia: This may seem surprising since Trace is now part of an all Filipino acapella group. But for most of Trace's life he was pretty removed from the Filipino side of his heritage.
Trace: My dad is white and my mom is Filipino. I'm technically third or fourth generation Filipino. So I'm very far removed the Filipino culture but looking back, a lot of the things that were Filipino like the Filipino culture has weaved its way in but I grew up not knowing any of it.
My grandparents mentioned that they made an active decision to make sure that my parents only spoke English. My mom went to the same high school I did. We were the only Filipino family there when I was there, so I couldn't even imagine what it was like when my grandparents moved there in the 60s. There was a very active decision for my mom to be very assimilated to the white western suburbs of Chicago, Illinois.
I 100% identified as white I because I didn't know anything different. It's funny, my sister looks very white but I look a little more Filipino.
Lucia: It wasn't until junior high that Trace noticed that he was missing the Filipino side of his culture.
Trace: My two best friends in high school were the two Indian girls in my school. They are first generation (i.e. parents emigrated from India). So when I was going to their house in 7th and 8th grade, I saw the culture that they had. Then they started asking me about my Filipino heritage when they came to my house. They were like, "You're Filipino but where is it? It's not here." I think that's when I started realizing that I am missing part of my culture that other people are expecting me to have. I just didn't know what it was.
Lucia: Something interesting about Trace is that instead of rejecting his Asian side, he embraced it. Leaned into it. Played along with it. He recalls an incident from high school.
Trace: For orchestra, I played violin in high school and there was a moment where we we were all auditioning against each other for the higher chair. I remember I was like number four or something and I had beaten everyone else in my grade. I remember there was one girl that was a few chairs further back from me that saw the list with me and scoffed at it and said, "Oh, of course the Asian boy won."
I very distinctly remember thinking, Oh, that's the way that people are going to see this. They're going to see that because I'm the Asian boy, I'm going to be the one that plays violin who's going to be higher up, and taken more seriously as a classical violinist or whatever just because that's what the stereotypes are. And I remember thinking if that's what people are going to think, I'm going to lean into it.
I'm not going to feel guilty about playing the Asian card when everyone else is going to play it for me.
I feel a little lucky about the fact that I was never ridiculed for being Asian. It's kind of privileged to say but the Asian stereotypes that I was associated with aren't necessarily negative. Everyone's like oh, of course, that kid is smart. Oh, of course that kid is the best violin player. I never felt that it was something that I needed to shun.
I am lucky that those stereotypes ultimately kind of helped me, but I do get that if you are automatically pigeon-holed into what people are going to think of you from when you walk into the room, that can be damaging. But in high school it didn't affect me too much.
Lucia: Even though the Asian stereotypes didn't affect Trace too much, being mixed did cause some confusion among his friends.
Trace: I was practicing in a practice room after school and my dad had come into the school to look for me because I had no cell phone service in the practice room. This girl that I knew came in and frantically knocked on the door.
She came in and said, "Trace, there's this man looking for you."
And I said, "Oh it's my dad probably, I'm late and he hasn't called me yet."
She's like, "No, he's a white guy." And I was like, yeah, probably my dad.
She gave me the most confused look! She thought she was protecting me from this random white guy that was trying to find me, but it was actually my dad.
II. The Making of a Journalist
Lucia: Earlier in the episode, we mentioned that in 7th grade, Trace and his friend Stephen Sotor worked on a 16-minute short documentary project called Genie in a Bottle: Unleashed. The project was inspired when Stephen’s mother introduced them to the artist Martyl who created the Doomsday clock.
The Doomsday Clock is a symbol which represents the likelihood of a man-made global catastrophe. Coincidentally, in history class, they were studying World War II and they became intrigued with The Manhattan Project which ultimately led to the invention of the atomic bomb.
Trace and Stephen got together to produce a short documentary which featured interviews with the widow of the main Manhattan Project scientist, as well as with others who were on the team that developed the atomic bomb. Stephen edited and directed the documentary, while Trace scored the video with his original music. Trace also mentions that Stephen's cousin was involved.
Trace: So, we made a documentary called Genie in a Bottle Unleashed because one of the metaphors was that once they had created the atomic bomb, they let the genie out of the bottle. And you can't put the genie back in the bottle. What they had done was finished and they couldn't reverse it. S
We thought that quote was funny, so we personified the genie and dressed up his cousin. The other guy was working and his cousin was the genie and we interviewed him about how he felt being let out of the bottle and how he felt about being used as this weapon.
That documentary was really what got me started in journalism and documentary-making and all that stuff.
Lucia: The documentary made it to international film festivals and it received a lot of attention from the media and press. Here’s a clip from CNN when they got interviewed.
Trace: We won the Chicago Children's International Film Festival with that documentary. We spoke at the United Nations. We toured around for two years promoting it because a lot of people were fascinated by that these 8th graders had taken such like a heavy topic. Obviously the documentary was aimed for kids our age to understand why the nuclear weapon might have not been the best thing and what we do going forward. That was what set me off it towards documentary and informative video.
III. Joining The Filharmonic
Lucia: After the international success of Genie in a Bottle, Trace and Stephen partnered up again to create a sequel called The Final Frontier. It was a short documentary exploring the question of whether countries should develop weapons to use in outer space. It was another heavy topic but they broke it down for their audience which was 7th and 8th graders.
From there, Trace knew he wanted to be a professional storyteller, so he enrolled in the University of Southern California’s broadcast journalism program where he fell into reporting and producing for television.
So how did he end up in music? Well, music is literally in Trace’s DNA.
Trace: My dad's a musician and he writes music for TV shows and films. So I grew up playing piano and violin and singing was just kind of something I did for fun.
So since I was five years old, we were forced to pick up an instrument. We were forced to play piano and then it was just kind of known that between my sister and I, when we turned 8, that we would pick another secondary instrument. That was kind of the way it was going to be. It wasn't even a choice.
Lucia: One experience would push Trace further into the world of music. In high school, he tried out for choir and a capella but he didn’t get in. So in college, Trace was determined to be a part of a singing group.
Trace: It's funny - I didn't follow the vocal program in high school, I was like a bad singer in high school.
I was just straight-up not good, so I think that really pushed me to do more in college. When I graduated high school, I went to the University of Southern California. While I was there, I picked up singing as more of a full-time hobby. I was in an a capella group at USC called Troy Tones where I was the music director and quickly that became all I did. It was my hobby that took up way too much of my time.
Lucia: When Trace was in college, his Dad pushed him to keep pursuing music. Major in music, he'd say.
Trace: I didn't want to make it my full-time job and I really liked making documentaries. So that's why I majored in it, but my dad always would laugh and say you're going to end back up in music. There's no way you're going to continue doing this documentary stuff. It's great that you think you like this, but you're going to end back up in music.
Lucia: But as fate would have it, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. And Trace actually did end up back in music.
Trace: I was approached by a former USC alum who was a producer on a show called The Sing Off on NBC. He said that they were looking for Filipino Americans to join this group. They were wondering if I'd be interested to meet with these guys to see if it would be a good fit.
I had no idea where it was going to go. I mean, I got that email from the guy whose name I recognized, Ben Bram. I was just