Waking Up to the Arts : Visual and Musical Program Is an Eye-Opener for Students--Even the Nappers

Eyes shut tightly, slumping forward in her seat, the student appeared to be sound asleep as a recent art and music-education program neared its end at Newport Harbor Art Museum.

Even composer William Kraft, there to lecture about making music, had noticed.

“One girl was dozing off a bit,” he said.

Kraft was neither offended nor dismayed, however. In just two hours, an impact had been made in advancing teens’ understanding of contemporary music, despite the gaping chasm between current classical compositions and the thumping rap music or screeching heavy metal that tops Billboard’s sales charts.

“You could see by the students’ reactions,” Kraft asserted. “They asked good questions, interesting questions.” In fact, the napper woke up about halfway through his discussion, “though I’m not sure what is was that woke her up,” he added with a good-natured laugh.

This recent presentation for about 75 students from Tustin High School and Costa Mesa’s Estancia High School was part of a program that combines visual art and music education at the Newport Harbor Art Museum, tours through a current exhibit, live or recorded music and lecture demonstrations.

Now in its sixth year, the program is offered to Orange County high schools by the museum and the Orange County Philharmonic Society, with additional sponsorship this year from the Southwest Chamber Music Society, a group that offers a concert series at Chapman University in Orange.

Like outreach programs offered by other local arts institutions, this one helps attempts to help fill the gap in an era of severe cut backs in public school arts education.

“There’s no music education in the schools at the elementary level,” said teacher Constance Cassady as her art students boarded the bus back to Estancia High. “Many of the kids are very ignorant, musically, and this gave them a wonderful opportunity” to learn about both disciplines.

On Friday, students were given a docent tour of the “Third Newport Biennial: Mapping Histories,” a talk with artist Robert Sanchez and a short, challenging performance of contemporary music written by Kraft and California composer Frederick Lesemann, who also discussed the hows and whys of what they do. This is the first year that students have heard from both visual artists and composers, the latter courtesy of the Southwest Chamber Music Society.

Whether the message relates how many hours a day composers spend writing or that a work need not follow a narrative story line, “the impact is very strong when it’s coming directly from the person creating the work,” said SCMS artistic director Jeff Von der Schmidt, who played horn in a duo with his wife, violist Jan Karlin.

Established to explore links between art and music, the program’s participants sometimes draw direct and specific analogies. Last year, for instance, one lecturer attempted to show how the “American experience” of the early 20th Century was evident in Edward Hopper’s paintings and American music from the same period, said museum education director Ellen Breitman.

But, like this semester, the focus is often broader, emphasizing the “basic creative impulse,” or simply recent trends in each field, Breitman said.

“Over the years, the students--and all of us--have seen that the creative process begins in a similar way for all artists,” she said. “There’s an idea, and whether you’re a visual artist or a composer or a dancer, you find a means to express this idea.”

Students were shown this time that artists can be inspired by a vast array of ideas. The museum’s biennial show, for instance, contains seven installations by California artists who address concepts as different as the way women are portrayed in romance novels to the experiences of Latino immigrants. The latter is the subject of “Entrance Is Not Acceptance: A Conceptual Installation” by Sanchez and collaborator Richard Lou.

“We’re not interested in the idea of making pretty objects . . . but in making things that speak to ideas, and ideas of community and what community can be about,” Sanchez told youths seated on the floor within his darkly lit, room-sized installation.

The multimedia work, which includes doors that won’t open or lead nowhere and videotaped interviews with undocumented workers, calls attention to the social and cultural barriers facing immigrants from Mexico. Sanchez called on his multicultural audience to express their own views and “think of how your own culture can contribute to the society at large.”

“All of you here should have as much a voice as anyone else, and I encourage you to use that voice.” Through the arts, “you can speak to issues and ideas that can have an effect on changing opinions,” he said.

Lesemann, a USC music professor, had a more practical approach to the creative process, at least in one case. The inspiration for “Doubles,” an exultant contemporary work that Von der Schmidt and Karlin performed, was highly pragmatic: The couple asked him to write a French horn and viola duet for them. The character of the piece emerged as he endeavored to write the score that blended two disparate sounds.

“It’s hard to imagine two more contrasting instruments,” he said.

Von der Schmidt also played “Evening Voluntaries,” a brooding, challenging horn solo by Kraft, who gave students a bare bones, bottom-line explanation of why he chose his career.

“Being a composer means you hear music and you’ve got to get it down,” said Kraft, who has had works commissioned by the Pacific Symphony and the Orange County Performing Arts Center, among others.

By December, about 1,200 students will have taken part in this semester’s program, said Breitman, who sends teachers instructional packets as well as evaluations that help organizers gauge the program’s success.

“We usually get very positive responses” and some schools re-enlist year after year, she said.

Cassady, whose students were to return to school to make installations with social commentaries, had nothing but praise for the program, wishing only that it was three hours instead of two.

“The best part was the fact that the kids were able to meet the artists and hear about their work in their own words,” she said.

While at least one youth may have dozed off, many appeared to have enjoyed and benefited from the field trip--at least parts of it.

Nora DeLaTorre of Tustin High School said she learned that everybody can have a unique interpretation of an artwork.

“We can make our own kind of art in our hearts and minds,” she said.

Ebony Roebuck, also of Tustin High, was almost brutally direct in her end-of-the-day assessment: “The art was OK. The music sounded like a chase scene from a scary movie, and it’s good to get out of school.”