Massachusetts-licensed architect; Berkshire native who once wanted desperately to leave and who has since returned to build a life, a career, and one of extreme music’ s most relentless contemporary bands.
Music on the Move, Berkshires and Beyond
Economou grew up between Lee and Pittsfield, surrounded by the entrepreneurial energy of her parents, Luisa and John.“ We’ re so spoiled,” she says of growing up here.“ You have almost immediate access to the arts at all times.” Her family’ s businesses provided another kind of education. Her parents operated the Belden Tavern in East Lee during her early childhood, where food and hospitality intersected with comedy, live music, big-band performances, Latin nights, and touring entertainment. Her father later moved into auctions and technology, while her mother operated Pittsfield Precious Metals, where Economou watched people from radically different backgrounds move through the shop, which is still open. John and Luisa also operated Rainbow Restaurant in Pittsfield for several years at a location which now houses RJ’ s Restaurant.
The lesson was less about choosing one profession than refusing to be confined to one.
Her father, Economou says, was an entrepreneur“ in the true sense”— someone who never decided he had to be only one thing. Still, heavy music arrived early and largely from outside the immediate world around her. Economou remembers discovering increasingly aggressive sounds while still in school, including Converge, the metalcore and hardcore punk band whose guitarist / producer Kurt Ballou would, years later, help record Escuela Grind.
The deeper she traveled into extreme music, the smaller her local peer group became. A record store that was located on North Street in Pittsfield, Rebel Sound Records, helped change that. It gave her access not simply to recordings, but to the communal side of underground music:
touring bands, performances, and other listeners who understood why these sounds mattered.
That hunger for community followed her when she left Massachusetts. Economou studied art and art history at the University of Texas at Arlington. Through the local music community in Dallas, she met Fuentes, who was already active in bands and booking DIY shows. The two eventually began organizing performances together, and when Economou was accepted into Cornell’ s graduate architecture program, they headed north. Escuela followed soon after.“ We just started a band because it was something to do up there,” Economou says.
Building the Vision
The earliest version of Escuela began with Fuentes and another musician in Ithaca. Together, they began writing remarkably short, concentrated grindcore and powerviolence songs. Initially, there was little long-term strategy. Practices produced songs. Songs produced shows. Economou joined almost immediately.
DANIELA RIVERA HACIA CUANDO( TO WHEN)
OCT. 10: ARTIST CONVERSATION, 2PM | HACIA CUANDO: AN OPERA, 1PM & 4PM
On view now: Chilean-born and Massachusetts-based artist Daniela Rivera explores the migration of cultural traditions through the material language of pre-Hispanic fresco.
NORTH ADAMS, MASS. | massmoca. org
Photo: Tony Luong
28 // BERKSHIRE MAGAZINE Fall 2026