Project Summaries

Antonio Centenera, pianist and composer

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, composer

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.