Beilue: 'Songs My Mother Taught Me'

WT Symphony Orchestra uses video to tell a universal story

Photo: This still from "Songs My Mother Taught Me" shows the close parent-child bond celebrated in the song and video, a collaboration between the West Texas A&M University School of Music and others. (Photo by B.J. Brooks)

Dr. Mark Bartley wanted to lead others in telling a story, but not just any old story. It needed music (OK, an orchestra), a soloist and a setting that was specific to the region and university where he is associate director of the School of Music.

“Music is powerful,” said Bartley, the Lilith Brainard Professor of Music at West Texas A&M University. “We can reach people where they are. We live in West Texas, and we should tell these stories of what it’s like here by shooting West Texas people doing West Texas things in West Texas venues.”

It’s doing so with a song written by a Czech composer 140 years ago.

Take the 60-piece WT symphony orchestra, soloist Lauren Nevarez, her 18-year-old daughter Faith Nevarez, Lauren’s 8-year-old second cousin Makinley Maltesta, a crew of cinematographers and production assistants, and sprinkle them in Thompson Park in Amarillo, Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum and the Joseph A. Hill Memorial Chapel over a two-day Easter weekend.

A month later, the eventual finished work is a five-minute music video featuring Antonin Dvorak’s “Songs My Mother Taught Me,” released — appropriately enough — shortly before Mother’s Day on both the WT School of Music’s YouTube and Facebook pages.

It is the second such video in the last 15 months the School of Music has produced. The first was “Pathway to Polaris,” released prior to the Covid pandemic in January 2020.

That music video followed a young violinist symbolically going out into the word. It follows her from practice room to performing with the orchestra in the concert hall, from the fountain at the Charles K. and Barbara Kerr Vaughan Pedestrian Mall on campus to Cadillac Ranch and finally to Palo Duro Canyon. Much of it was filmed from a sweeping panoramic view of drone footage.

The response blew away any expectations. The video has more than 48,000 views, which told Bartley and others they were on to something.

“What we’re trying to do is reach people where they are,” he said. “Part of it is, as I encounter my students, almost all of them are online. They spend as much time on their phone and computer as they do in real life. They need to be encountering us in the space they inhabit. Real life is best, of course, but we are in a remote location, and that’s not going to happen too often.”

The success of “Pathway to Polaris” led to the second video. The difference in “Songs My Mother Taught Me” is the song by master’s student Lauren Nevarez is woven into a story of young girl hearing songs from her mother and passing them on to her daughter as she herself becomes a mother.

The video has a flashback of Makinley, playing Nevarez as a child, listening to her mother, and transitioning to Nevarez as a mother with her own daughter Faith.

Dr. B.J. Brooks, who wrote “Pathway to Polaris,” did the orchestration. Bartley and Brooks storyboarded the presentation, and Susan Milligan translated the German song lyrics into English with specific wording that Bartley preferred.

“When you do something like this, you’re trying to create what doesn’t already exist,” said Brooks, professor of music theory and composition. “You try to create an experience in another way to experience the music. If you are at a concert, you can let your imagination travel wherever.

“In a song, it’s a little bit different. The words paint a clearer picture. When you have the idea to put that with video, you can go a little further and try to be more expressive.”

Pre-planning and organization were a key in two days of shooting — one that, not surprisingly, involved numerous takes. Sharpened Iron Studios in Amarillo was in charge of filming, which included a crew from Wisconsin.

“That’s all we’re trying to do is be a good storyteller,” said Bartley, director of orchestral activities. “I’m not a cinematographer, but I want to use this medium to tell our story. It was a great stretch for me, but it was also a real treat to cross disciplines and work closely with fellow artists in other ways. It was very gratifying and exciting.”

Nevarez, a teacher at Sundown Lane Elementary, graduates May 8 with her master’s of music in vocal performance. She got her bachelor of arts in music education from WT in 2010. For Nevarez, her performance became personal. Grace Golan, her mother, died in 2017.

“It’s like I stepped in her shoes a little bit and felt her presence remembering me being with her,” she said. “She always supported me in all my musical ventures and was my biggest cheerleader.”

Ideally, Bartley would like for one video a year to continue. It’s enough of an undertaking with all the other projects in the School of Music that one annually is a reasonable but not overwhelming number. While it could be seen as a recruiting piece for potential music students to WT, that’s not the purpose.

“If people see that and say, ‘Oh, I want to be part of that,’ then that’s fine. But this is not a recruiting video,” Bartley said. “It’s telling our stories where we live. This series will always be set in our neck of the woods, and it’s us telling musical stories that connect with everybody.”

Do you know of a student, faculty member, project, an alumnus or any other story idea for “WT: The Heart and Soul of the Texas Panhandle?” If so, email Jon Mark Beilue at jbeilue@wtamu.edu.