HOUSTON — Uniquely positioned with superb concert halls and its own opera house, the Shepherd School of Music has begun to celebrate its 50th anniversary. The conservatory, founded as part of Rice University here, has made itself known as a musical powerhouse due to the panoply of its graduates in orchestras across the nation. Highlighting Shepherd’s mid-century celebration are seven world premieres that feature the school’s composition faculty, and that’s just a smidgen of the 400 events typically presented during the academic year.
“Back in 1974, Rice decided to start a world-class school of music and made a big investment,” said Matthew Loden, the dean of music. “We are a conservatory inside of a research university. Undergrads have to be admitted to Rice and also to Shepherd by audition. So we have sophisticated, academically bright and musically brilliantly talented students who want to have the bespoke musical experience and tap into our residential college system that has dorms.
“You can imagine a Harry Potter-like sorting hat in which you are placed as a freshman in one of these colleges, and that becomes your home base for the next four years. The residential college gives undergrads a different experience than what they might get at a conservatory where they might live in an apartment off-campus.”
According to Loden, 30 graduates from the school are members of the Houston Symphony. One of the keys to Shepherd’s success is its small student body, which has an enrollment of 285 individuals. The student players have to cover all of the ensembles — orchestra, chamber music, opera — and, of course, their own recitals. “Our size allows us to concentrate on what our students need to be successful in the future,” said Loden. “We look at how we train them. How do we make them better musicians and better people?”
The school has one large orchestra and a chamber orchestra, both of which are led by Miguel Harth-Bedoya, director of orchestras and professor of conducting. Harth-Bedoya, who recently joined the faculty, brings a wealth of experience, including his 20-year stint as music director of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra and seven years as chief conductor of the Norwegian Radio Orchestra. In 2024, he made his Metropolitan Opera debut conducting Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar.
Harth-Bedoya’s engaging, enthusiastic teaching style is contagious to students. I saw him in action during a rehearsal of the Campanile Orchestra, which consists of non-music majors. He was helping one of his student conductors, Ana Spasovska. As he stood near the back of the cello section, he would periodically raise a colorful flag to convey something to Spasovska.
“The idea behind the flags was to communicate with her but not stop the rehearsal,” said Harth-Bedoya. “Red indicated posture. Green was for more eye contact with the orchestra. It’s very effective.”
The rehearsal took place in Stude Concert Hall, which can accommodate more than 900 listeners. It is one of three halls inside Alice Pratt Brown Hall, built in 1991. The building houses the 230-seat Duncan Recital Hall and the Edythe Bates Old Recital Hall and Grand Organ, which contains the massive Fisk-Rosales organ with 75 stops that control 4,493 pipes. On top of that, Pratt Brown Hall also accommodates 65 practice rooms, seven classrooms, rehearsal and small ensemble spaces, and 54 teaching studios.
A pedestrian plaza connects the hall with Brockman Music and Performing Arts Center, which encompasses the Morrison Theater, a lovely European-styled opera space with an orchestra pit for 70 musicians and a seating capacity of 600. The Brockman also contains a large rehearsal room and large room to work on the sets.
“In the spring, our opera program did The Ghosts of Versailles,” noted Loden. “John Corigliano came here. That was the first time that we did an opera in our opera house where all of the voice students were cast. Right now we have a maximum of 40 students in the entire opera program, which is led by Joshua Winograde. If you get in, you are surrounded by piano-vocal coaches, diction coaches, stage directors, and your voice teachers, and you have an opportunity to perform. The Morrison Theater is an ideal size for young singers who don’t have to worry about damaging their voices in a large hall.”
The instrumental studies are anchored by top-tier staff, including Kathleen Winkler, chair of classical violin. On the wall of her office is a large drawing by composer Caroline Shaw, who was one of Winkler’s students. The drawing depicts a large tree with branches that are shaped like the scroll of a violin. “I love to find out what my students’ dreams are,” said Winkler, “and I want to nurture and support that dream to make it a reality.”
Shepherd’s faculty recently added David Chan, who spent 25 years as concertmaster of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and taught at Juilliard for 20 years. “A big pleasure of being at a smaller school like Shepherd is that we can have our hands in all of it,” said Chan. “I can work on solo rep with my students, coach chamber music, and be involved in certain aspects of the orchestral process. Sharing my philosophy of preparing the material and understanding musical priorities is very important. I am trying to get my students to understand the larger musical picture of where all this fits in — make it a genuine musical experience and not just to do orchestral excerpts and pass an audition.”
The Shepherd School Symphony Orchestra under Harth-Bedoya delivered an incisive concert on Oct. 25 at Stude Concert Hall. The program launched with a propulsive account of John Adams’ Short Ride in a Fast Machine. Next came Respighi’s Fountains of Rome, in which the orchestra created delightful images and moods that transitioned from dawn to dusk. The concert concluded with Brahms’ Symphony No. 4. The rich sound from the strings conveyed yearning, the woodwinds shaped their lines marvelously, and the brass glowed, with the horns projecting wonderfully mellow tones. During the standing ovation, Harth-Bedoya made sure that all orchestral sections were recognized.
To celebrate Shepherd’s 50th year, commissioned works from the conservatory’s composition faculty included Shih-Hui Chen’s The Birds Are Real, Ambushed From Ten Directions, which involved shadow puppetry; Richard Lavenda’s Upon Further Reflection for two vocalists and chamber ensemble; Anthony Brandt’s single-movement Chamber Concerto for Cello and Orchestra; as well as Kurt Stallmann’s multimedia The Fruit and the Work; Karim Al-Zand’s comic vignette A Joint Interest; and Arthur Gottschalk’s chamber concerto Tombeaux: pour un création d’une rapsodie.
Mezzo-soprano alumna Sasha Cooke and the Shepherd School Symphony Orchestra under Harth-Bedoya will perform Pierre Jalbert’s Another Starry Night at the school’s gala concert Nov. 8. The orchestral forces return to the stage on Dec. 5 to play the Adagio from Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 and selections from Prokofiev’s Cinderella.
