A group of musicians and artists from around the North Bay are planning an inaugural event Dec. 13 that will honor the artistic achievements of local youth and give those with musical aspirations a place to hone their skills.

They’re calling the event a “friendraiser,” with the goal of creating an after-school music program that pays tribute to Alex Ruiz, a budding local musician whose life was cut short by a drunken driver last February.

“As we were trying to come up with an event to kick this off, we kept thinking in terms of a fundraiser event,” said Katie Koscielak, a recent graduate of UC Berkeley whose focus of study was setting up and maintaining sustainable systems in communities. “At some point someone just sort of spoke the word ‘friendraiser’ and from there the idea just exploded — that’s what we need, not a fundraiser — a friendraiser.”

The goal of the group is to build a complete, self-supporting sound engineering facility that will give Calistoga music students experience from one end of the musical process — from songwriting, to playing their instruments, to recording and engineering sound that will result in a polished musical product.

“We believe that giving students the tools to create art, and music will bring people together and build strong relationships within a community,” Koscielak said. “And what could be more sustainable than that?”

A small world

Although Koscielak grew up in Calistoga, as the daughter of a St. Helena High School teacher, she attended school in St. Helena. She had nine years of vocal training under Craig Bond. While she was learning to make music there, just down the street from her Mora Avenue home, Vince Gutierrez and Alex Ruiz were making music.

Gutierrez, Ruiz, Koscielak, and Angie Mewhorter had attended the same band camp, known as Collective Sound, and that’s how they all met. For nearly the last two years, Koscielak had worked to manage a band, “Tear It Down” started by Gutierrez and Ruiz.

“We had lived down the street from each other all of our lives and we never knew each other, or shared our musical talents,” Koscielak said. “Had we met, who knows what kinds of music creations we could have collaborated on.”

Gutierrez, Ruiz and Mewhorter attended the camp with scholarships from the Ted Kohler memorial scholarship fund.

Using the nonprofit Collective Sound model, Koscielak, Mewhorter, Gutierrez and many others want to create an afterschool program that will supplement the musical training available to students through their districts in Calistoga and St. Helena.

Some of the students who attended the Collective Sound camp, including Ruiz and Koscielak, later returned to the camp as summer counselors.

They want to dedicate the program and the sound studio — which will be built in a former oceanic shipping container and located on the campus of the Calistoga High School — after Ruiz, who was killed last February when the vehicle he was riding in was hit by a teenager driving under the influence of marijuana and alcohol.

Next stop, school board

“Alex was an amazing musical talent,” Koscielak said. “In this way, we can continue to bring art to the community, and give other young people a way to discover their own artistic talents.”

The project will be presented to the Calistoga Joint Unified School District Board of Trustees at the Dec. 7 meeting, and has received positive support from school personnel so far, according to Lydia Ruiz, Alex’s mom.

“It does my heart good to see that the young people are so enthusiastic about keeping music alive in their home community — for the next generation,” Ruiz said. “It helps me personally to be involved with something so positive — I can feel Alex alive in this endeavor, and it helps ease our immense pain of missing him.”

Ruiz said she hopes the event will be the start of a program that can be sustained for years to come.

The December “Friendraiser” will be held from 5 to 9 p.m. at the Tucker Farm Center and will feature several Bay area bands who will perform while several local artists from Calistoga and St. Helena — including Allison Fellion and Remi Feyve — will be painting.

Tickets will be available at the door for $20 and may be purchased at the Yo El Rey Coffee Roasting Company on Washington Street for $15.

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