The Eaton and Palisades wildfires had a heavy toll on the school communities as students whose schools were burned in the Pacific Palisades and Altadena, faced uncertainty and anxiety and online classes.
Local musician and performer Trent Mills wanted to find a way to help them rebuild.
"We were very lucky...we were evacuated, but we got to go home, so we were faced with the idea of losing everything and just that thought was terrifying. We found ourselves to be so, so, so lucky to get to come back to our homes," he told KCLU.
Together with Casey Comstock, the musical director, they put together a fundraising concert called Revive.
"Casey and I are in a band and our dear, dear friend -who is our guitarist - lost his home in Altadena. Everything. It's devastating," said Mills.
The show features musicians and performers and 100% of tickets sales and money raised is going to benefit the two impacted schools’ performing arts programs.
"I think about the arts, especially at that age, is it goes far beyond these prospective young world class musicians and actors. What it really is, is it's an outlet. It's a life preserver for a lot of kids that may not have great home life," said Mills.
"It's also the conduit to the arts and it's kind of the last one that you get to interact with before you become an adult. So it's it's extremely important. And there's a lot of kids that, you know, can't go join the football team or, you know, it can't go play sports or something like that. And it is the ultimate team sport. Oftentimes, it's a way for you to learn a lot of those leadership skills and collaborative skills that especially at that age, it's so, so important that it," said Mills.
There’s faces from the big screen – like Shelley Regner who plays Ashley in the Pitch Perfect movies, and stars of stage and small screen too.
"Every single person we reached out to just wanted to contribute. They wanted to help and use their art form to help raise money. And it's also an outlet. You know, we all have been it's been quite a year for LA, and it feels good to work on something that where, you know, it's cathartic to use your art for, for us all to process our feelings and also to raise money for people who are deeply affected by the fires, " said Comstock.
"It'll be a mixture of mostly pop, rock, some musical theater music," said Mills.
"We have a really interesting and diverse group of people coming to sing and participate. So myself and Casey in a really incredible band, and then some of the singers we have coming up are like Javon McFerrin, who was in Broadway's Hamilton, Motown, Rent. Emily Battle from Broadway Bounty Hunter, Bat Out of Hell National Tour, Dear Evan Hansen. Shelley Regner—most people know her from the Pitch Perfect movies and a bunch of other stuff. Brian Logan Dales, who's a singer and songwriter of the rock band The Summer Set. Isabella de Souza Moore, she's currently on the Annie tour with Whoopi Goldberg, and she just did a really fun run with that. Molly McCook, which a lot of people will recognize as she was one of the lead characters on the Fox show Last Man Standing. She's also an amazing singer. She does a lot of TV stuff so she don't get to do it as much. John Krauss, who was in the original Broadway cast of HadesTown, is also in Wicked. " said Mills.
"So it's a really interesting, fascinating, incredibly talented group of people and all wanted to figure out something we could do to help raise some money for this cause. They're all deeply passionate about the cause," he said.
Revive Aid takes place on Thursday at the Scherr Forum Theatre in Thousand Oaks.
