Lilly Chertock wins award for original song promoting Ocean Awareness

In late June of 2018, Samo sophomore Lilly Chertock (’21) submitted a music video of her original song “Save the World” to Bow Seat, an organization dedicated to inspiring younger generations of students to become active in ocean sustainability. Unbeknownst to Chertock at the time, this music video would eventually be announced in 2019 as an official winner of the International Ocean Awareness Student Contest, a large-scale competition between young student activists and artists alike.The contest gathered art—music, drawings, film, poetry and prose—from across the globe that calls for action to keep the ocean inhabitable. Chertock was the Middle School Music Winner, unable to submit to the high school level as she was 14 at the time of submission.With climate change dominating political conversations in recent years, Bow Seat wants to inspire students like Chertock to advocate towards a more sustainable way of living. Once the winners were announced, the organization posted a statement on their website.“Your paintings, poems, photographs, songs, films, essays and stories revealed how climate change has already, and will continue to, impact marine life, from plankton to polar bears; wove (sic) connections between plastic, overconsumption of resources and the climate; and shed light on the ways in which pollution and climate change affect human communities unequally, particularly communities of color,” Bow Seat saidChertock’s goals with the song, rather than just wanting the thousand-dollar prize, was much more selfless, and aligned with the goals and mission of the Bow Seat organization.“My goal was to communicate the urgency of our climate crisis while maintaining a hopeful tone that we can still turn things around and ‘save the world,’” Chertock said.Chertock’s winning video--a mashup between piano and bass playing as well as singing-- stems from a lifetime passion for music. With her father having a professional-level music studio, Chertock has been musically inclined since she was young, the musicality eventually culminating in this achievement.“My dad is an audio engineer and he has renovated our garage to be a music studio, so we have a lot of equipment in there. That’s how I was able to record the song. With him being so involved and so knowledgeable on how music is made and music history, it encouraged me to try learning new instruments. His influence has really impacted me as a musician, so through that, I was able to learn songwriting and things of that nature,” Chertock said.Chertock encourages others to follow in her footsteps, and take part in Bow Seat’s recently announced, first 2019 contest as the organization continues to search out students also determined to “save the world.”