Musical Mastery Holy Names School Has Fine Tradition Of Teaching

U.S. Cavalry troops once trained on Fort George Wright’s parade ground. Now hundreds of music students march to a different drummer at the site of the turn-of-the century fort.

Monday night, the Holy Names Music Center will parade some of its faculty and guest artists in “A Classical Concert in a Classical Setting” at the Isabella Ballroom of the Davenport Hotel.

The event will benefit the music center’s scholarship fund. “We currently have 60 students who receive some kind of scholarship aid,” says center director Judith Meyers. “In the past three years, we’ve more than doubled not only our student body, but the number of scholarships we give. We want to do more of that.

“We’re now at the point where we can go to elementary school teachers and to community centers and say, ‘If you have students you think need private instruction, we have the money to give them financial help.”’

Tuition ranges from $26.50 to $32 per hour. The center’s 34 faculty members, including 15 members of the Spokane Symphony, teach more than 300 private music students.

Last week, the Holy Names Music Center was accorded full membership in the National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts, an accrediting organization that certifies the quality of faculty, facilities, administrative structure and financial stability of 221 non-profit, non-degree-granting schools of the arts in the United States and Canada. The music center has held associate membership in NGCSA for the past three years.

The center has a history dating back to 1888. That’s when five Catholic nuns of the Order of the Holy Names arrived in Spokane to open an elementary school. The nuns began offering piano lessons before the end of their first year.

In 1907, the order established the Holy Names Normal School, later called Holy Names College in 1938. When the Army decommissioned Fort George Wright after World War II, the sisters moved the college to the former Army post, where it became Fort George Wright College of the Holy Names in 1960.

The college granted its last degree in 1982, but its alumni include opera singers Thomas Hampson, Linda Caple and Douglas Johnson along with symphony musicians and music teachers all over the country. After the college closed, the Sisters of the Holy Names maintained a program of music instruction at the music center. In 1993 they hired Meyers to give the school more community focus.

“At the point I was hired there was no full-time director or community board,” she says. “I was hired to create a program and the resources to back up that program to serve the broader Spokane community.”

Meyers grew up in Racine, Wis., where she studied violin and sang. She attended Carleton College, George Williams College and she holds a Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University. She came to the Holy Names Music Center after having spent eight years as executive director of Trailblazers, a non-profit recreational organization for disadvantaged children in New York City. Meyers had previously served on the recreational services faculties of two of her alma maters, George Williams College and Penn State.

The Holy Names Music Center is governed now by a board of members, made up of members of the Sisters of the Holy Names, and a 12-member board of trustees made up of nine members from the community and three appointed by the sisters. “The Sisters of the Holy Names expect the board of trustees to take increasing responsibility for the financial viability of the music center as well as for its direction,” Meyers says.

Despite the increased secularization that comes with community involvement, the sisters still support the music center with a capital fund established by the sale of Fort Wright College property to Mukogawa Women’s University.

“They consider us a part of their ministry,” Meyers says, “because the performing arts has always been one of their ministries.

The annual budget of the music center is a quarter of a million dollars. “The music center’s other income comes from tuition, from individual, foundation and corporate donations, and fundraisers such as our concert at the Davenport on Monday,” says Meyers.

The center also provides music instruction to Mukogawa students.

The center serves a wide range of age groups. “We have a Children’s Musique class for students from birth to 4 years old and we have students who are in their 80s,” Meyers says.

“What we’ve tried to do is make musical arts education available to a broad range of people and help them realize that music is a part of your life regardless of age.”

Meyers says she’s impressed with the cultural scene in the Inland Northwest. “Moving here from New York, where you can always see the best and the brightest in the arts, I’ve been delighted with the opportunities we have here in the visual arts, in music, in theater.

“I see the Holy Names Music Center contributing to those opportunities, particularly by preparing performers,” Meyers says. “It takes training a lot of young performers to get one or two that are super like the Thomas Hampsons and the Douglas Johnsons. But I also think that by involving people in both musical instruction and performance, we help create the patrons and audiences of the present and the future.”

MEMO: “A Classical Concert in a Classical Setting” will be Monday at 7 p.m. in the Isabella Ballroom of the Davenport Hotel. General admission is $25, $5 for students. Patron seating, which is $60, includes a gourmet dinner prior to the concert. Tickets are available through G&B Select-a-Seat, 325-SEAT.