Go away with ... ARKAI

As the duo ARKAI, violinist Jonathan Miron and cellist Philip Sheegog have been nominated for a Grammy Award this year for their album “Brightside.” The electro-acoustic string duo vividly remembered how hard they worked for their first professional gig almost eight years ago in front of an audience that included global leaders. “We had a five-minute slot to perform at the Peace First summit hosted by Barack Obama’s sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, in New York City,” Sheegog told me. “This summit brought together incredible change makers, peace builders and industry leaders from around the globe [that included] Parkland students [and] Gandhi’s grandchild. We had never composed a piece of music before, but decided that our first gig ever would be the time to try this out. We had a very tight timeline to execute! We were blissfully ignorant and had no idea what we were doing, but gave it our all and successfully composed our first piece of music. That was the moment where we thought, ‘Hmmm, maybe we have something here.’”