08/20/2026
Kiva Schweig '23 started the band KOI as a Marin Academy senior. It hasn't stopped since. 🎸
Music Teacher Chris Detrick placed him and his best friend Callum Brown '23 in a band together, and they'd already been writing music on their own. The summer after junior year, they recorded an entire album, "Dreams Come Now," produced, played, and promoted entirely by themselves. They even wrote the album title on the car they carpooled to school in. 🎶 🚗
Fellow MA creatives helped bring the vision to life: Ezra Trost-Goldhammer '24 shot their promotional photos and album cover at the Albany Bulb, and Harley Hibbitts '24 later organized a Bridge the Gap fundraiser at Sweetwater Music Hall, where Kiva met his future UCLA roommate and bandmate.
Now studying Cognitive Science at UCLA and leading a second band, The 529s, Kiva still books Bay Area shows every summer with KOI, including recent stops at the Golden Gate Park Bandshell and the Ashkenaz in Berkeley. And if you were a traveler at San Francisco International Airport today, you may have caught them playing a concert at SFO. Want to catch a future show? Follow KOI on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/musicbykoi
As Kiva puts it: having more on his plate has forced him to use his time carefully and become more intentional. Running a band made him better at communicating, organizing, and leading at work, and his academic and professional experiences have made him more thoughtful and structured about music. Each part of his life strengthens the others.
In his words:
"Marin Academy taught me how to work with people, ask questions, trust my ideas, and move between different interests without feeling that I had to choose only one. The music program did not just teach me how to play music. It taught me how to lead, collaborate, and turn an idea into something real."
