Vian Haziel is learning how to shape the noise in his head into something tangible. The rising junior music major at Columbia spent the past year working on “Confessions,” his recently released debut EP, with the hope of capturing who he is — and who he is still becoming.
Haziel grew up in Milwaukee, a city he loved but where opportunities for young musicians felt sparse. He spent high school taking introductory music classes and even won a music production award, but he still felt adrift, unsure how to channel his love of pop and R&B artists like Justin Bieber and Shawn Mendes into something of his own.
“I couldn’t really figure myself out there,” he said. That changed the summer before his senior year, when he attended a five-week program at Berklee College of Music. Surrounded by other musicians, writing songs in hallways and trading melodies over coffee, Haziel felt, for the first time, that he belonged.
“To go into that program surrounded by musicians, seeing people actually write songs, write in the hallways and produce music, I felt at home for the first time,” he said.
The reaction to his first performance was “incredible,” Haziel recalled.“People were cheering, they were really happy about it and the next time I got on stage people remembered me. At that moment I kind of realized that this is what I wanted to do.”
So with his mind made up and wanting to find a bigger city to continue an environment of artists, Columbia was the place for Haziel to continue to learn about what it takes to build up his music.
With the help of his academic advisor, countless professors and fellow peers, Haziel has been able to curate a community of artists and friends that are able to support each other both in and out of lectures, he said.
Kevin Mendoza, a junior music major, met Haziel for the first time at new student orientation where he introduced himself and a friend who were exploring campus. They began to make music together during their second semester of sophomore year being able to collaborate and bounce ideas off of each other.
Haziel told Mendoza about the concept of the singles he wanted to put out including “Vian?” and “Dance Under The Stars” which are both intimate tracks. “It’s the fact that the artist has enough trust to come up to you and basically look up on you to make sure their music is good and how they want it.” said Mendoza
Haziel invited Jacob Stapp, a junior computer animation major, to do the cover art for the album, which Mendoza produced. Stapp had already done Haziel’s cover art for “Dance Under The Stars.”
Creating the art took a certain amount of trust between the two of them, Haziel said.
“I trust them and I know that whatever I tell them is confidential,” he said. “So it definitely helped that we were friends because otherwise it would have been definitely difficult to express what I wanted without kind of diving into all the emotional parts of making this EP.”
Stapp said taking feedback is part of the process so it resonates with the client, in this case, Haziel.
“I seek pointers throughout the process,” Stapp said. “I hope the art matches the depth and message a client may seek.”
With the goal of releasing an EP by 2025, Haziel took his first steps by putting out three songs separated from his EP with his first single being released in 2024 titled “Vian?”
With six tracks of pop, R&B and trap-infused tracks, “Confessions” is about Haziel reflecting parts of himself and putting it in a place he can confidently go back to. He described it as his own universe he’s been able to create, building it off of already existing songs like track three, “Leave Me Alone” and track four, “Something Wrong With Me” that were both written back in high school.
Since his teen years the biggest change from Haziel is he’s giving himself room for experimentation. “When I first started writing songs, I was just like, I wrote songs, maybe played a little bit of guitar and piano, but I couldn’t really hear it going anywhere else,” he said.
“That hindered my ability to keep writing more to it, expanding on it, adding more instruments, because it felt like a fever dream at the time.”
Haziel hasn’t always found it easy to share his struggles and vulnerabilities with anyone which is why this EP holds so much truth to him “I was too afraid to express what I was feeling to friends and family I just kept it to myself but writing songs is kind of my way of letting them all out and it’s always kind of been like that.”
Haziel is currently working on his debut album “Flawless.”
Copy edited by Manuel Nocera
