Project Summaries

Claire Druffner, cello

This year, due to the generosity of the Sviatoslav Richter Fund for Music Outreach, I curated and hosted the recital series Carmina: Musical Meditations on Events of the Liturgical Calendar with three performances at two local churches, Holy Rosary Catholic Parish and St. Matthew Lutheran Church. Inspired by the Bach Cello Suites, these performances provided a meditation through music on the life, death, and resurrection of Christ through varied programming. I commissioned Shepherd alumnus Jaylin Vinson to write a work for cello and piano as a mediation on the life of Christ expressing how the divine meets the human. I also collaborated with fellow Shepherd students Lindsay Feldman, soprano, and Antonio Centenera, piano, joining me on Ave Maria, a work composed by Shepherd alumni and Houston-based composer, Daniel Knaggs. It was meaningful for me to create a space where beauty was accessible to all, especially church attendees who had never heard a cello before or had no experience with classical music. One attendee told me that he enjoyed this new way in which he could experience “Easter joy”.

Asher Lurie, composition

Thanks to the Sviatoslav Richter Fund for Music Outreach, I was able to host Expressions of Judaism in Contemporary Music on March 29, 2026, at the Archway Gallery. This concert featured premieres of compositions by myself and Ethan Resnik, and performances of works by Jonathan Leshnoff, Yuval Medina, and Max Helfman. Each piece presented a different perspective on how music can be influenced by Judaism through culture, community, prayer, language, and more. Instrumentation included solo cello, voice and piano, and voice with string quartet. The piece I wrote for the concert, Remnant I, was a collaboration with SSM vocalist Jessica Lyublinsky. She shared that she writes poetry, and I decided to write another piece for her to sing about the history and identity of the Karaite Jews, setting her text to music. Karaites comprise a small sect of Judaism that I was previously unfamiliar with. I was introduced to a world of diversity within Judaism that I had never encountered before.

The Archway Gallery was an extremely welcoming venue throughout this process. Following the performance, I was met with great encouragement from audience members who were positively impacted by the concert. For some, this was one of their first times hearing classical music with a living composer in the hall with them.

Max Whittaker, composition

This year I had the pleasure of putting on my Classical-Metal Unity Concert with the help of the Sviatoslav Richter Outreach grant. Not only do I think this was a great experience that reached and taught the audience about the intersection of classical and heavy metal music, but I also learned a lot from producing this concert. 

The program consisted of movements from Bartók’s String Quartet No. 2, my String Quartet No.3, and Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8. My goal in this programming was to feature classical works that have an intense and dissonant rhythmic drive that is very evocative of metal music. My quartet was to show specifically how one could use metal and commercial effects (like distortion, reverb, delay) with a live string quartet to further evoke the sound of metal music. Additionally, with the help of my teacher, Dr. Gottschalk, we developed an interactive interface that the audience could use to affect the sound of the instruments. I thought that this was all very successful. The audience was able to approach the interface and get a real understanding of what different effects can do. Afterwards, the audience felt like they had made a difference in the musical experience, which brought them closer to the music itself.

Antonio Centenera, piano and composition

My project is to write a new piece for string quartet and clarinet that incorporates elements of traditional Filipino song and dance. Traditional Filipino melodies and rhythms, with all their charm and cheekiness, will be set to new harmonies and textures in a ten-minute piece with four continuous phases, each named after a different Filipino folk dance: Itik-Itik, Binasuan, Cariñosa, and Tinikling. I’m interested in seeing how musically adventurous I can be while still retaining danceability and cultural authenticity.

Alongside the music, the actual dances will be performed by Kasama, Rice’s Filipino and Southeast Asian dance team. 12 dancers from Kasama’s pool of 30 will be selected for this project according to availability. Each of the four dances has a unique character, story, and function in Filipino culture, and most of them include fun props (fans, candles, bamboo sticks). With this project, I hope firstly to promote Filipino culture and talk to audiences about how certain dances and stories can be expressed in music. I grew up dancing these dances, and I want to share my love of them and of music in this special way. Secondly, I hope to engage a new audience with acoustic art music. This project will provide Kasama dancers with a unique opportunity to collaborate with great musicians and foster in them a great appreciation for the work that goes into a musical performance. This program of music and dance will be performed two times: once as part of the Concert Truck activation on March 28 and once at Shepherd’s 2025 Community Day on March 29.

Fiona Shea, violin and Victor Tswei, composition

Our collaborative project, “Contemporary Connections,” is designed to expand the musical curiosity of young children by featuring new music in conjunction with more canonical works in the classical music repertoire. The inspiration for this project comes from a shared belief that the standard family concert format, often featuring a narrow range of oversimplified repertoire, has a limited impact on the engagement and long-lasting interest of classical music in young children. Challenging children to hear new sounds and broaden their concepts about what defines classical music is not only beneficial to their individual musical development but is laying the foundation for future audiences and performers of classical music. Through this project, we hope to continue developing strategies that inspire children to explore and actively engage with the various aspects of classical music.

For this project, we decided that a new work for violin and contrabassoon composed by Victor would be a fun way to capture the attention of families and children by offering a fresh tonal palette. The new work will be a short and spirited piece (ca. 5 minutes) that explores the extreme timbral and registral differences between violin and contrabassoon. It would be a fascinating sonic experiment to bring these two seemingly disparate sound worlds together. The playfulness and eccentricity of the music would serve to make music accessible to the listener through the internal drama of sound as opposed to knowledge of music theory. SSM undergrad contrabassoonist Jack Bernal will join us in this project. Our target audience is elementary school children with performances at SSM’s 2025 Community Day, and a Houston area elementary school.

Valentina Huang: East Meets Pipes, Alta Arts Center and St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Houston, TX

I created East Meets Pipes, a multidisciplinary recital of organ music at two Houston venues. The program connected short, diverse traditional compositions for organ with two new works. Inspired by Asian art and poems, the program reflected my musical journey, seeking to fuse my dual identity (Chinese and American), which is a shared experience among many international students who further their education in foreign countries. I gathered different elements that represent Chinese culture and curated a program combining educational comments and music to create an engaging experience for diverse communities promoting cultural heritage awareness and musical expansion.

Houston’s AltaArts hosted a performance workshop featuring two new compositions for organ by SSM student composers Victor Cui and Katy Li in April. We arranged the organ solos to be played as piano 4-hands for this preview. The music was enhanced by projections of a contemporary landscape on the wall of the venue. The composers, performers and visual artist shared their insights on this collaborative project with the audience followed by Q&A and a reception afterwards.

The final performance in May at St. Thomas Episcopal Church was a 45-minute lecture recital reflecting on my musical journey. A world premiere of the new organ compositions paired with Sigfrid Karg-Elert’s Reed-grown Water and Chelsea Chen’s Youth of the Mountain, both traditional organ repertoire offering musical portraits on landscapes from different countries and time periods. Audiences were amazed to hear such diverse music in the church, as well as the exotic aesthetic that each composer brought to this instrument.

From crafting this project to realizing it, I’ve learned so much in many ways. East Meets Pipes is close to my heart and is part of my artist mission: promoting new organ music that’s inspired by Asian poetry and art such as Horse and Moon. Through this project, I was able to bring my community (Asians) closer to the pipe organ and to expand the new music repertoire for the instrument.

Anne Pinkerton: Open Mic and Karaoke Night, The Women’s Center, Houston, TX

My project focused on creating an hour-long music event partnering with organizations that support unhoused Houston populations. I was inspired to do this project by my work last year volunteering with Urban Voices Project in Los Angeles. My aim was to offer a karaoke-style program where the audience could participate with our Shepherd School students. I planned an Open Mic & Karaoke Night at the Women’s Home center in Montrose for their residential clients. Our group of SSM students played an hour of popular tunes for the residents to sing along to and make music with us. Our instrumentalists created the back-up “band” for solo or group songs and took numerous requests for favorite songs. At first the singing was softer with fewer suggestions being shared, but by the end everyone was involved. We had the whole room singing and requesting many more song ideas. We had one woman who had an incredible singing voice perform a heartfelt and moving solo, and another who did several hilarious songs with performances to make everyone laugh. Other songs were group sing-alongs enjoyed by all. We also we provided snacks and beverages that followed a “cozy coffeehouse” theme. As we were packing up, several women expressed that they would love for us to come back. I learned the importance of building relationships and trust through music making. Music can be vulnerable, and since the community and musicians didn’t know each other, it takes time for individuals to feel comfortable singing in front of a group.

Jonathan Mak, MM Piano Performance

I am producing some educational outreach music programs for kids with special medical needs by bringing chamber music to them and teaching them about chamber music, specifically the piano trio. We will showcase our instruments, demonstrate how they work, and play a variety of music ranging from Dvorak to Disney classics. Our aim is to bring live music to those who currently cannot access the concert hall due to physical restrictions or illness.

Jaylin Vinson, BM Composition

Mami Wata:

My project includes writing and producing an original 15 -20 minute operatic retelling of an African mythological folktale with an educational, interactive presentation. The intent of this project is to bring opera and this method of storytelling to audiences that would not be exposed to no have ready access to programs of this type.

The chamber opera’s narrative is inspired by the African folktale of Mami Wata, a mythological spirit of the sea. An African Goddess of Beauty, Healing, and Wealth, Mami Wata represents a natural force of elegance and marvel in addition to indifference to human ideas of good and evil. The chamber opera will work to capture a narrative that interweaves these characteristics of Mami Wata and her interventions with the human world. The libretto will be written in collaboration with Houston Youth Poet Laureate Avalon Hogans.