{"id":3411,"date":"2015-01-07T20:32:46","date_gmt":"2015-01-08T01:32:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2015\/01\/07\/music-and-mentorship\/"},"modified":"2022-11-07T18:17:19","modified_gmt":"2022-11-07T23:17:19","slug":"music-and-mentorship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/music-and-mentorship\/","title":{"rendered":"Music and mentorship"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_3052\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Ann Shoemaker \u201902 was 12 when she first saw the love of her life. She had a 12-year-old\u2019s reaction.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had no idea what (a bassoon) was,\u201d she said. \u201cMy elementary school band teacher showed me a picture of it, and I thought it was really funny looking but thought, sure, why not. I\u2019ll give it a try.\u201d<\/p>\n

Good call. Today, Shoemaker is a renowned master of the woodwind instrument and on the fast track to tenure at the Baylor University School of Music, barely a decade after earning a Bachelor of Music degree from Furman.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a lot of shining stars out there that come through here, but the fact that she has risen, at least in her teaching world, to the top of that rank pretty quickly at a school like Baylor is really impressive,\u201d Furman Music Department Chair Mark Britt said. \u201cA lot of folks may not make it to those schools for quite a while in their career.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shoemaker has performed as a soloist, chamber musician, and in orchestras across the United States and in Europe, including at the InterHarmony International Music Festival in Italy, and is currently the principal bassoonist with the Shreveport (LA) and Waco (TX) symphonies, while substituting with other orchestras when she gets the chance.<\/p>\n

This fall, she plans to tour with pianist and fellow Furman alum Chuck Dillard \u201998, and it\u2019s not likely she\u2019ll ever find gigs in short supply.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a lot of fantastic bassoonists out there, but it\u2019s certainly less common than the violin or trumpet or flute or something like that,\u201d Shoemaker says, \u201cso if you\u2019re a pretty good bassoonist you\u2019re usually\u00a0in pretty high demand.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Mastering an instrument is fundamentally a highly personal endeavor, but it\u2019s the synergy between the bassoon and the rest of the ensemble she likes most.<\/p>\n

\u201c(The bassoon) is a constant challenge. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll ever feel like I\u2019ve mastered it or there\u2019s not more to accomplish,\u201d Shoemaker says. \u201cIt can drive you crazy, but I love the challenge and the interaction it provides. The bassoon isn\u2019t really as much of a solo instrument. It\u2019s more collaborative, and that\u2019s what I love\u2014chamber music and playing in the orchestra.\u201d<\/p>\n

Teaching is also collaborative, and it\u2019s no coincidence Shoemaker cherishes that part of her life at least as much. \u201cOther college professors get to work with their students for one semester, and there might be 50 people in the class. But I get my students as freshmen, and I get at least one hour that\u2019s one on one with them every week and three hours with them total every week over the course of four years,\u201d she says. \u201cYou get to know them pretty well and watch them learn and discover who they are, so it\u2019s pretty cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shoemaker is about to enter her sixth year at Baylor. Before that, she was an adjunct professor at Furman after earning a Master of Music degree from Yale and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from North Carolina-Greensboro, where she was a Hayes Fellowship recipient.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t go in a room with her and not feel comfortable, and I think that was true for the students (at Furman) too,\u201d Britt says. \u201cAnd once that comfort level was there, she could really tighten the screws and get them to become better players because they trusted her.\u201d<\/p>\n

At UNCG, her secondary area of study was ethnomusicology, which looks at \u201chow music and culture relate.\u201d During her research she found herself participating in a couple of programs she believes can make the world a better place by exposing children to music.<\/p>\n

OrchKids, a Baltimore Symphony Orchestra program, is a model for helping underprivileged kids in the U.S., while El Sistema does the same in Venezuela. Shoemaker spent several weeks volunteering in both places in 2009 while writing her dissertation comparing the two.<\/p>\n

\u201c(El Sistema) was not only creating this huge, new population of children and eventually adults who love classical music, but it\u2019s doing it in a way that helps to improve their lives. That\u2019s what really fascinated me about it,\u201d she said. \u201cI have thought a lot about trying to start a program in Waco. Baylor has a great school of social work and we have a great school of music, so a dream of mine would be to form a program here that would have a collaborative effort from the two schools.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s just no question that being involved in the arts improves the quality of peoples\u2019 lives. They\u2019re being creative and learning to think outside the box, but they also learn discipline,\u201d she said. \u201cNot all of them are going to be great musicians. But they\u2019re all learning. It\u2019s expanding their worldview. They\u2019re feeling connected with people around the world with this art that people for hundreds of years have shared. They\u2019re seeing concrete examples of how they can set a goal and accomplish a goal. That seems really simple, but for a lot of kids they\u2019re not ever really told you\u2019re capable of doing anything you want. They just don\u2019t know, and that translates into every aspect of their life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shoemaker was born in Fort Worth, Texas, but her parents were North Carolina natives who encouraged their children to go to college there. A family tour of the University of North Carolina, Duke, Wake Forest, Davidson, and Furman wasn\u2019t enough to keep her older brother from, somewhat ironically, choosing to attend Baylor, but Shoemaker was smitten by Furman and knew no convincing would be required to keep her in the Carolinas.<\/p>\n

“You could tell when she was here as a student there was something special about her,” Britt said. “She’s the real deal when you hear her play and watch her teach\u2014she’s got it going on.”<\/p>\n

Learn more about music at Furman\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ann Shoemaker \u201902 was 12 when she first saw the love of her life. She had a 12-year-old\u2019s reaction. \u201cI had no idea what (a bassoon) was,\u201d she said. \u201cMy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":14211,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,26,34,3,39,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-administrative","category-admission","category-alumni","category-music","category-parent-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}