St. John’s Prep has a number of incredibly talented students. One special display of Prep talent is Sofia Bostrom ’21 who released an album in December 2020. She wrote six original songs for the fall play back in October and worked with Jeff Engholm and Kai Kang to record and release the album, titled “Pyramus and Thisbe,” on Bandcamp. Digital downloads of the album are pay-what-you-can starting at $4 and for the first month after its release, all proceeds went to the Trans Women of Color Collective.

I got a chance to talk with Sofia about the album. She says it was very exciting to write, record, and release her own album. She’s wanted to release music for a long time, and this was a perfect opportunity to test the waters.

The writing process was a little weird because Sofia gets really musically inspired late at night. She doesn’t stay up late often, but she does some of her best work when she does. She also had inspiration for the album going in because it was based on the story of Pyramus and Thisbe (hence the title).

The recording process was pretty easy because the tracks were already recorded for the fall play. Sofia got Help from Jeff Engholm and Kai Kang ’23 to produce it. Releasing the album on Bandcamp was also easier than expected. Sofia was worried there would be legal obstacles with releasing music, but it was a simple matter of uploading files and adding album art.

Sofia was very pleased with the reactions to the album. There was a small part of her hoping it would go viral, but that was mostly just a fantasy. Nevertheless, the responses were very sweet and supportive. Sofia also didn’t expect the popularity of certain songs compared to others. She assumed “Lionhearted” and “Man in the Moon” would be the most popular, but it turns out more people enjoyed “The Wall” and “Thisbe.”

Sofia made the decision to donate the album’s revenue from the first month of its release to the Trans Women of Color collective. She understands this world is hard on Black people, trans people, and women, and wanted to do something to help those groups. She also felt the need to support minorities through her art; she already has a job and a supportive family, so she really wanted to give back to a huge part of the art community that doesn’t get as much support as it should.

Link to stream or download the album:

https://sofiaregina.bandcamp.com/album/pyramus-and-thisbe

Link to donate to the Trans Women of Color Collective:

https://www.twocc.us/donate/