Shepherd School makes summer home at music festivals

Shepherd School makes summer home at music festivals
Students, faculty participate in premiere festivities

BY JESSICA STARK
Rice News staff

The adage might go “home is where the heart is,” but for students and faculty in the Shepherd School of Music, home is where the harp — or cello, viola, piano, etc. — is. This summer, like most, Rice faculty and students made their homes at various summer music festivals and schools throughout the country and around the globe.

	PHOTOS.COM

For Pierre Jalbert, associate professor of composition and theory, that meant packing up and heading to Aspen, Colo., where he ran into some of his Shepherd School colleagues, including James Dunham, professor of viola and chamber music, and Cho-Liang (Jimmy) Lin, professor of violin.

The Aspen Music Festival and School seeks to bring the brightest young musicians together with the classical music world’s foremost instructors. More than 750 students and 200 artist-faculty come each year.

“It’s an honor to have a work premiered there,” Jalbert said. “The Aspen Music Festival, along with Tanglewood, is one of the country’s premiere summer festivals where most prestigious faculty and guest performers and composers gather and make music together.”

The Shepherd School of Music
Looking to enhance your skills at one of the nation’s most prestigious university-level music programs? Apply to The Shepherd School of MusicAt the festival, Jalbert debuted his “Cello Sonata” with David Finckel and Wu Han. As one of the concerts in the festival’s first week, the performance was filmed and streamed on the Internet. Already viewed in more than 75 countries thus far, it can be seen until late August at www.medici.tv/#/performance/11/.

The site also streams video from different music festivals all over the world, ensuring many introductions to Jalbert’s work. The concert was also recorded for “Performance Today” from American Public Media on 245 radio stations.

“It’s great exposure to have the concert viewable on the Web,” Jalbert said. “It’s always a challenge to get new music out to a wider audience.”

As with the other faculty members from the Shepherd School, Jalbert balances his artistic endeavors, teaching duties and professional enterprises and still makes time for the travel required.

“For many of the performance faculty, the summer is all about music festivals and traveling,” Jalbert said. “For me, I like to compose in the summer months too, which can be difficult if traveling all the time. I try to strike a good balance between staying put to work and travel.”

Dean Robert Yekovich also stays plenty busy, figuring travel and festivals into his schedule.

This summer Yekovich headed west to Aspen and Santa Fe, N.M., to celebrate the summer successes of his Shepherd School colleagues, students and alumni. Receptions were held in both locations for the school’s patrons and friends.

“Many of our faculty and students are active participants in these festivals, and several friends of the university and school spend time there,” Yekovich said. “These events are a nice way to bring these constituencies together and draw attention to the fine work being done at the Shepherd School and Rice.”

Nearly 60 guests attended the Shepherd School event in Santa Fe, where they heard a violin solo by Lin, who is performing with the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival this summer. The festival is one of the world’s top celebrations of chamber music and has commissioned about 50 pieces over the past 30 years.

The guests also met Kathleen Kaun, professor of voice, who coaches each summer at the Santa Fe Opera. Kaun’s protégé Jennifer Johnson ’08, recently won the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and will begin the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program at the MET this fall.

Shepherd School fans from Houston, Aspen, New York, San Francisco, Dallas and Charleston, S.C., attended the Aspen reception. There Yekovich didn’t just talk about the steady ascent of the Shepherd School’s opera program, he showcased arias and duets by three students studying voice with Stephen King, professor and chair of the Voice Department. King is also a faculty member at the Aspen Music Festival and School. 

The students were accompanied on piano by one of King’s Aspen colleagues — Richard Bado, director of opera studies at Rice. Bado is currently conducting Aspen’s production of “Hansel and Gretel.”

Later this summer, Shepherd School Symphony and Chamber Orchestra Music Director Larry Rachleff will conduct the Aspen Concert Orchestra and the piano competition winner in a concert of works by Rachmaninoff, Needham and Ravel.