Meet Erika Oba | Musician (Piano/Flute), Composer, and Educator

We had the good fortune of connecting with Erika Oba and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Erika, how has your work-life balance changed over time?
As a creative freelancer, work life balance is a constant challenge! When I was younger and first starting out in my career as a musician, I felt a lot of pressure to say yes to every possible opportunity. This lead to a lot of work, but also constantly feeling burned out. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve worked on holding better boundaries and saying no to more things. In terms of my ideal balance, I’d like to have enough capacity outside of my working life to be able to show up for my friends, family, and community.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I’m active as a composer and a performer, and work primarily in jazz, experimental, and new music. At the moment, I’m really excited about the energy in the creative performing arts scene in the SF Bay Area. Many long standing venues have closed down over the last couple of years, but new spaces and communities are popping up as well. There is a lot of creative new music (and dance and theater!) happening right now, and I’m really happy to be part of this scene.

I’ve been a working musician in the Bay Area for 15 years now, and there have definitely been some ups and downs. Building a sustainable career as a freelance artist is definitely challenging. Meeting the right mentors at the right time has definitely helped! I’ve had several mentors who really helped model how to push for artistic growth at really high standards, while also prioritizing building community. At the end of the day, the communities we build are what sustain us and I’ve had the great privilege of being embraced by some amazing communities.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
The Albany Bulb is definitely worth a visit! It is a public park covered in public art works, and it’s right by the water and has some beautiful paths. For food – I’m a big fan of Shan Dong in Oakland Chinatown. For drinks plus music and ambiance – Mr. Tipples in San Francisco is my platonic ideal for a jazz club.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
My career and artistic life have been supported and made possible by many wonderful mentors and organizations, but there are two organizations in particular that I’d like to shout out! Composer Gabriela Lena Frank has been an incredible mentor to me, and her organization the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music changed the course of my musical life. The other organization is Asian Improv Arts; all of the mentors that I’ve met through that organization have contributed tremendously to my current trajectory as an artist (Jon Jang, Francis Wong, Johnny Nguyen, Lenora Lee, and Vinay Patel).

Website: https://erikaoba.com

Instagram: @erika_oba

Other: https://erikaoba.bandcamp.com/

Image Credits
David DeHart, Ben Tarquin, Hitomi Oba, Chris Trinidad