A pair of local musicians opened a new music school in La Jolla. Natasha Kozaily, who performs under the name Gunakadeit, and Chad Farran, a percussionist, singer/songwriter and TV/film producer, just celebrated the opening of the Kalabash School of Music and the Arts, in the beachside community of Bird Rock.
The school was formerly called Prodigy School of the Arts, where Kozaily first took a job when she moved to San Diego. Over time, the hours spent working there ended up turning into an opportunity that she couldn’t pass up.
“When I moved here five years ago, I was teaching at this place called Prodigy School of Arts,” Kozaily says in a phone interview. “The owners wanted to sell, and they wanted to sell it to me. So the first person I thought of to partner with me on this was Chad.”
The school features a curriculum comprising private instrumental instruction, including voice, guitar and piano. There are also visual arts classes, and every class can be taught to students ranging in age from elementary school children to adult learners. But Kozaily said she and Farran wanted the school to be more than just strictly educational.
“We were putting together this vision we had that is different,” she says. “It has more of a community vibe, more modern.”
In addition to hosting classes and private instruction for budding musicians, Kalabash will also host a variety of performance-based events, including open mics, student performances and, eventually, concerts by established musicians. For Kozaily, the school aims to give musicians-in-training the tools to become artists in their own right.
“We’re creating an opportunity to have students come together and jam,” she says. “That’s sort of the overall philosophy—we’re teaching them to create their own music.”
