Mt. Lebanon musician, collaborator make big impression where it counts
The music of Nadia Huber and Jeremy Levin is attracting plenty of positive attention.
Nadia Huber’s portrait for WYEP’s Reimagination project.
Jeremy Levin often deejays in addition to making his own music.
Think back to when you first picked up a guitar and started strumming the strings, with no clue as to the proper way to do it.
As a youngster, Mt. Lebanon resident Nadia Huber did take a few lessons before turning her attention to some other musical instruments.
“A few years later, I went back to the guitar because it was just sitting in my room,” she recalled. “I just kind of made random shapes, and I made up a bunch of different chords. And that’s when I started songwriting. I just did my own thing.”
The 16-year-old’s own thing has made its way to Los Angeles and the attention of some heavyweights in the music management business after Steve Szumski, partner at Zeitlos Entertainment, played some of Nadia’s compositions for Ben Maddahi, president of Unrestricted A&R.
“He and Steve both contacted me and said, ‘Hey, we like your songs,'” she reported. “So they set up a Skype call with me, and they told me why they liked my songs. And they said, ‘Hey, if you want to write for artists like Demi Lovato, you can do that.'”
In case you don’t recognize that name, the former child TV star already has five gold albums to her credit as a singer.
And in case you’re wondering how a self-taught musician who will be a senior at Mt. Lebanon High School ended up signing with Unrestricted – a company that consults for Lovato’s label, Island Records – the link is another Western Pennsylvania resident.
Jeremy Levin, 18, of Murrysville made Nadia’s acquaintance when they finished first and second, respectively, in the 2016 Labsy Teen Media Awards presented by the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.
“A few months went by of us just being internet friends, I guess,” he said, before he asked her to collaborate on his composition called “Alive.” “I never really met her in person before I invited her to my house to record the song.”
Levin, a 2017 Franklin Regional High School graduate, also effectively taught himself how to play a variety of instruments and, using advanced computer software, to produce his own music.
“I’m creating all these different sounds. And instead of me playing one instrument in a band, I’m recording myself 60-plus times in one song. The battle is trying to take what’s in my head and re-create it in something you can press ‘play’ and listen to,” he said.
Fans of the genre known as electronic music have been listening to his songs through much-visited online posts. And one of those fans happens to be Steve Szumski, who since has signed Levin to Zeitlos Entertainment.
Levin, in turn, introduced Szumski to Nadia’s compositions, and the rest just might be music history.
Nadia and Levin made their own history by performing live together for the first time to open this year’s Teen Media Awards, which encompass both the Lasbys and the Ralph Munn Creative Writing Contest. The organizers invited them after learning from Jeremy that the teens had gotten together because of the program.
“He was so glad that they had the opportunity to meet and really take their music to another level, and to think about making it a career for themselves,” said Kelly Rottmund, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh teen services coordinator.
During the Aug. 12 performance, the duo played six songs, three composed by each and none heard by the public before, including a version of Levin’s “Swimming Pools” that he reworked completely for the show.
“It was fantastic,” Rottmund said. “We’re so lucky that they were so exited about this opportunity and spent the time that they did in preparing for it, because they told us that they wanted it to be something special. And it really was. We got so much feedback from attendees about how much they enjoyed it, and how talented they were.”
Nadia shows her talents with her debut EP, “Ages,” a seven-song collection of originals featuring vocals, acoustic guitar and percussion.
The title track was selected for WYEP-FM’s 2016 Reimagination CD of recordings by area teenagers, and she also earned the opportunity to perform during last year’s Three Rivers Arts Festival. Plus she appeared a second time on the “Reimagination 3” collection singing backing vocals on Peters Township resident Steven Hart’s song “No Expansion.”
In the meantime, she plans to continue to work with Levin as a pair of people who don’t feel bound by the conventions of music. As Nadia said:
“We just do whatever’s natural to us.”