Sallyport - The Magazine of Rice University - Summer 2002

Shepherd Outreach - Arts
Spring 2002
VOL.58, NO.4
Shepherd Outreach
Viola in one hand and bow in the other, Joanne Wojtowicz leans
slightly out of her chair and asks, “Do you know what the most
dangerous job in the world is?” Curious and wide-eyed, 42 Kennedy
Elementary first-graders turn their heads toward her. “Being a
composer,” she continues, now that she has arrested their attention.
“Beethoven went deaf, Schumann went mad, and Bach, he had 20
children.”
Joanne Wojtowicz and a student from
Kennedy Elementary
The children don’t seem
particularly perturbed or
impressed, but they are
certainly more interested.
The next step is to provide
them with some ideas of
what to listen for, such as
“chase scenes” and “swing
sets.” Then, Wojtowicz
and four other Shepherd
School students—Hermine
Gagne (first violin), Yenping
Lai (second violin),
Marilyn DeOliveira
(cello), and Pi-ju Chiang
(piano)—perform the third
movement of Schumann’s
Piano Quintet in E-flat
Major. Not only do these
children hear a first-rate performance, they also discover in the process that
music of this kind can trigger the imagination, create pictures, and tell a
story.
Kennedy Elementary, a school in the Houston Independent School District,
is clearly in favor of encouraging music appreciation among its students.
Ted Russell, manager of the Community-in-Schools Project, organizes
these special events to expose the children to the arts. These 42 first-graders
weren’t the only ones who showed up for a concert—a second group of 34
first- and second-graders arrived later for the following half-hour session.
Andrea Deese, a special education aide who brought three of her charges,
says, “Young students need every chance to be exposed to the arts.”
Janet Rarick, an artist teacher in wind ensembles, is one of the Shepherd
School faculty members who help oversee this outreach program. She
explains that the program grew out of a discussion by the wind chamber
ensemble in fall 1998. Several students suggested using outreach as a way
to increase performance opportunities and potentially increase audience
size at regularly scheduled wind chamber music concerts. Leone Buyse,
professor of flute and chamber music, subsequently created an independent
study program for students who wished to connect with the Houston
community by coordinating outreach concerts. Her husband, Michael
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