GRASS VALLEY, Calif. June 19, 2026 – InConcert Sierra recently presented a $2000 ICS Music Matters Award to graduating senior Ari Cook. This award honors students currently studying music who have plans to pursue a music major at college or university. Ari exceeds the criteria for the award. Ari’s goal is to study composition and/or technology and applied composition. He has been accepted into two prestigious music conservatory programs, Berklee College of Music in Boston and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. However, he made a pragmatic decision to begin his post high school education at Sierra College before transferring to one of the excellent music programs within California.
His mother, Crystal Cook, said “I knew Ari was committed to learning piano when he played his keyboard independently every day for a year. After the year mark, I knew I had to find him an excellent piano teacher. I saw a video of a friend’s child playing piano beautifully and when I found out that his teacher was Lynn Schugren, I knew that I wanted Ari to study with her.”
Since August 2018, Ari has studied classical piano under the guidance of Schugren. Ari shared that, as a fifth grader, he wasn’t always consistent with practicing. By seventh grade, however, he had discovered a deeper connection to music, spending time at the piano improvising and expressing his emotions. That helped him realize that music was his passion.
For Schugren, having Ari as a student has been remarkable. She said, “It has been my pleasure to watch Ari grow from a very shy youngster to a poised and polished musician. He has a strong and natural sense of the musical language and is skilled in several different genres….His compositions are remarkably sophisticated as well. I am pleased and proud to know he will pursue his life as a musician.”
In September 2020, Ari also became a composition student of local composer Mark Vance. In the Young Composers program, Ari’s musicality and creativity became obvious to all who heard his new music performed.
After Ari’s Instagram page showcasing his original compositions went viral, he began receiving composition commissions from clients in Chicago, New York, the United Kingdom, and Malawi.
Vance said, “It’s been truly inspiring to see him find his passion in composing, arranging, and performing.
Ari attended the Stanford Jazz Workshop in July 2021 and July 2025, receiving private and ensemble instruction in jazz piano, as well as master classes from accomplished musicians. At the completion of the 2025 session, he was one of thirteen of the approximately 250 participants to win the “Shape of Jazz to Come” award. For Ari, jazz has become a genre of music he describes as joyful and offering freedom. When asked what music he enjoys listening to, he said, “music of the SF Jazz Collective or Nardis Jazz.”
In the summer of 2024, Ari was accepted into the highly competitive California State Summer School of the Arts, a rigorous, month-long program to prepare California students for careers in the arts, which has an acceptance rate of one in three based upon audition. During that month, he received private classical piano instruction and enjoyed group classes in theory, composition, music history and appreciation, African drum and dance, and Indonesian Gamelan.
In addition to private study, Ari has been enrolled in every class and ensemble offered in the Nevada Union High School Band program, including Jazz Band, Concert Band, Symphonic Band, and Winter Percussion Ensemble. In the NUHS band, he played concert percussion, drum set, piano, bass guitar, and upright bass. He was also a member of the advanced chamber choir. He also became a section leader for the concert and symphonic bands, a rhythm section leader for the jazz band, and a pit captain and front ensemble captain teaching technique and running rehearsals. Ari is also a member of a young jazz quartet that has performed at donor events for organizations including InConcert Sierra and the Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital Foundation.
It has been an honor for the InConcert Sierra board and staff to observe Ari grow, as both a musician and a gracious young man, from the time he performed in our early Sierra Student Showcases and during the years that ICS was privileged to oversee the Young Composers Project. He cultivated creativity, confidence, and dedication to his music. We wish him every success in his future endeavors!
Robin Laverty-Reves is a board member of InConcert Sierra and chair of the ICS Education Committee.