By Kayla Roberts

Special to the Reporter

Students Noël Young and Josh Pineda began what seemed to be just another class project at Northwest University, but within months they were flying to California for a music gig and $2,000. Northwest University’s (NU) Creatio, a music program within the business department, has been creating tangible success for students since director Jeff Lockhart launched the program in 2009.

There are around 60 music business majors every year at NU. For five years, students have seen 100 percent job placement upon graduation, according to Lockhart.

“We have more opportunities and requests for interns than we can fill in every single semester,” he said.For the survey of music business class at NU, Lockhart assigns a final project in which students showcase an element of music business. This could be anything from a presentation on copyright to booking shows for a hypothetical band.

“This is my favorite thing I do as a professor,” said Lockhart, who has been at NU for 15 years and began as the director of marketing and public relations. He now teaches classes such as music copyright and publishing, rock band ensemble and marketing 101.

Young and Pineda collaborated on the project and made a YouTube video covering Ed Sheeran’s song “Thinking out Loud.” Then they created a hypothetical business as a musical duo and researched a marketing plan that focused on social media.

Lockhart encourages students not to think of this assignment as a project alone but as a launch pad into a future business.

That is exactly what Young and Pineda did.

On March 13, Pineda posted the video on YouTube, which was filmed by a recent NU graduate. On the same day, Young shared the video on her Facebook page.

Shortly after posting the video, Young received a Facebook message from a woman she used to work with named Diljot Sahota. A little over a month before her wedding, Sahota clicked on the video while scrolling through her Facebook newsfeed. She wanted “Thinking out Loud” to be her and her husband’s first dance, and a live rendition would “make the song and moment more sentimental and personal,” Sahota said via email.

Excited by the opportunity to get her name in any kind of spotlight, Young told Sahota that she and Pineda would sing at her wedding for free. However, when she found out that the wedding was in California, Young began to give up on the idea. Two days later, she received a Facebook message that Sahota’s fiancé thought they would be perfect for the wedding reception and would pay them $2,000 in addition to travel expenses. Young said aspiring artists need to be shown that they don’t have to keep performing for free. Sahota showed them their worth as musicians, and for that Young is grateful.

Sahota’s traditional Indian wedding included five days of celebrations, and Young and Pineda performed for 1,000 guests at the reception on April 25. The highlight for Sahota and many of the guests was when Young and Pineda performed “Lucky” by Jason Mraz and Colbie Caillat for a dance with the bride, groom and their daughter.

“I cannot even begin to describe how beautifully Josh and Noël contributed to the party,” Sahota said. “They’ve given us memories from my wedding which we will cherish forever.”

Young and Pineda’s wedding gig is not the only tangible success for Creatio.

William Sybertz, a senior at NU, recently received an internship to EastWest Studios in Los Angeles, one of the most famous recording studios in the United States. He credits his internship to Grammy award-winning Steve Smith, the creative director of Creatio. Working under an assistant at the studio, he will be learning how the recording studio works. He said that he hopes the internship will lead to a job. With a degree in contemporary music industry with a concentration in audio production, he said his dream is to own a studio that records orchestras for film scores.

Lockhart’s vision for Creatio is to train the entrepreneur in the musician. He encourages his students, “Don’t think just because you don’t have a record label, or that you are 19 or 20, that you can’t do something significant.”