Anita Kruse

Anita Kruse trained as a classical pianist and composer before becoming a singer/songwriter and has performed her songs internationally.  In 2006, Anita founded Purple Songs Can Fly, the first ever recording studio housed within a pediatric oncology center and in it she helps children undergoing cancer treatment create their own songs.  Working within Texas Children’s Cancer and Hematology Centers, Anita has helped over six hundred young cancer patients and their siblings create, perform and record their own music.  Anita has also made sure that these Purple Songs Can Fly – literally.  The songs have travelled all over the world – and beyond - on The Rolling Stones’ world tour, to the top of Mount Everest and even into space.  Thanks to Anita Kruse, many very sick children have made their Purple Songs – and their hopes and dreams – truly fly.

                                                 

What’s your story, Anita?

I was born in Riverside, California. My father was a pilot in the Air Force so we moved many times as I was growing up. It meant that I had a very interesting childhood. I was fortunate to see other countries of the world, learning about other people and other ways of living. 

My mother was a pianist. She was amazing because, though she was a trained pianist, she could play anything that she heard by ear. That always impressed me because though I was naturally musical, it wasn’t my particular gift. So I was around music a lot and of course because of my mother, I wanted to play the piano too.  Wherever we moved, she always found the best teachers for me, but she was herself a great musical influence on me.  It was only much later in life that I discovered that my father was also musical too, but he didn’t talk about it very much.  He’d played the cornet in his high school and college bands, and I learned recently that he played in the inaugural parade when Eisenhower became President.

I got my degree in piano performance from the University of Connecticut and then I went to the University of Michigan for graduate school. I studied with the incredible pianist, Theodore Lettvin, and he was a great influence on me too.  There’s a famous book called The Great Pianists and he was one of them. I feel very fortunate that I got to spend time with him, to watch his hands and learn from his wisdom.  It was during that time, when I was in my second year of my Master’s degree, that I also decided to study composition.  There was a composer named Nicholas Thorne visiting the university on a year’s fellowship. The first thing I wrote was for piano and saxophone and when I took it into my composition lesson, Nick Thorne said, “Wow, Anita! I think you should keep doing this!”  So I didn't stop!  It just felt like I was just meant to do it.  I had never felt anything as powerful as the feeling of creating my own music and hearing it come to fruition.

At first, my composing was very classical, mainly art songs for piano and voice. I worked with a soprano because I didn't think of myself as a singer.  I was always very shy and very inward.  I was happy to play the piano in front of other people, but the idea of standing up to sing?  No, I just couldn't do it!   But I carried on writing songs which I would sing only in my own little bubble until one day a friend heard me and said, “Anita, you need to sing your own songs.”  That was many years ago and since then I've become more comfortable and less afraid, but I truly understand when children are shy and not ready to sing out.  That’s why I have made the Purple Songs Can Fly studio very intimate and secure for them.  There’s no big audience and they can create something that doesn't hold the same feeling of fear as live performance.

What is the story behind Purple Songs?

For several years I came up to the Cancer Center here at Texas Children’s Hospital (TCH) as a visiting artist.  I performed piano and flute duets with a wonderful flutist and friend, Jennifer Keeney.  The music was on the mellow side, and we used to setup in the central waiting area where the music could be heard throughout the Cancer Center. The patients and staff seemed to enjoy our music, so we were invited back to play every couple of months.

During that time, I was developing my own small studio at home and I was also teaching piano and composition.  I started taking my students into my studio to record what they had written. One of my composition students wanted me to help her write songs so she came in one day and I helped her write a song during her lesson. So within that hour we wrote a song, recorded it, and I handed it to her on the CD.  Thinking about that and also about my work at Texas Children’s, I suddenly saw an image of myself with my own studio in the Cancer Center.  I called Carol Herron, the Director of the Arts in Medicine program at Texas Children's and I told her about my idea. Carol already ran an incredibly extensive arts in medicine program with many artists coming in to work with patients – visual artists, creative writers, sculptors and musicians, but all the musicians were there to perform music, not to write music. Carol didn’t think that anyone had ever created a recording studio in a cancer center before, so I put a proposal together, we met the director of the Cancer Center, Dr David Poplack, and between us, we made it happen.

At first, we didn't have a designated space. I created a portable studio on a little computer desk with wheels that I could take in-patient. It had a keyboard, a microphone and a laptop and I attached monitors on Velcro. I even had a chair on it.  I was just like the Beverly Hillbillies with everything hanging off my cart!

Then I noticed that right behind the waiting area there were three little phone booths that had been built years ago.  Of course nobody used phone booths anymore because they had cell phones so it had become an unused space.  But those three little rooms were perfect for me, so I raised money to renovate them into a studio and we painted them purple. I have been obsessed with purple my whole life so I knew, as soon as I started this, everything had to be purple.

The Purple Songs Can Fly studio at Texas Children's Hospital

More recently, when they renovated the Cancer Center they gave us a different, roomier space and anyone can come and take part or just visit.  Like everything else in the Arts in Medicine program at TCH, it is completely open to any child who wants to take part. We include information about Purple Songs in every new patient handbook, the children might also hear about the studio from other patients, from the nurses or see our flyer in the reception area.  They can come and see the studio, and I ask them if they want to write a song.  I’m here every weekday morning, but we can arrange a time in the afternoons as well.

Some children want to create an instrumental but in general I start with the lyrics. Houston’s creative writing organization, Writers in the Schools, has been involved in Texas Children's Cancer Center for many years and its writers are amazing.  In fact, the very first Purple Song was a Writers in the Schools collaboration.  I help the children create words, a beat, and we choose the sounds that they like. Some children, once they have words and an underlying harmony, will start hearing a melody. Some children hear a melody right away and I will ask them to sing it to me and I will accompany it. It's different for every child, but even if they only sing a fragment or have just a couple of words, I can hear where their voice would naturally go.

A Purple Songs CD signed
by Mick Jagger

Most of the songs are simply about things that the children want to share – things that make them happy or things they are thinking about, and they are often unrelated to their treatment. Many children have written songs to give to someone, perhaps to their mother or caregiver to say thank you. There have been many beautiful thank-you songs. One girl wrote a song to thank her karate teacher for giving her strength called 'Strong Heart, Strong Mind'.  There have been a lot of songs about faith and about God and about angels, and for some reason, lots of songs about butterflies. One little girl wrote a song with the idea that her wishes attach themselves to butterflies and the butterflies then carry her wishes to God.  We’ve had so many really beautiful ideas like that.

There was a wonderful boy, Jonathan, who was about seven years old and wrote a song called, ‘I Hate Shots’.  He also really loved to make origami and wanted to make cranes for me, so I got him some purple origami paper and he made the cranes that I included in all of the framed CDs.

It’s wonderful to record the children singing because most have never heard their voice recorded before. They take their song home on a purple CD to share with family and friends, though I keep all the songs in an archive too.  To date, we’ve written and recorded over 600 songs and a selection of them can be heard on our website.

Once we have them captured, we let the Purple Songs fly.  People tell us where they are going in the world and I give them a CD or all of the songs on a fly-drive and purple lanyard to take with them.  Then they send us pictures from famous places and I share the photos on our website. The Rolling Stones took our CDs on their world tour and Dr Poplack recently took them with him on a trip to Africa.  For several years, Purple Songs flew on the in-flight playlist on Continental Airlines and then United, which was amazing. 

They even went up into space on a Space Shuttle mission in 2007 with astronaut Scott Parazynski.  Scott then came back to the clinic to meet with the children and share a film of his mission. He’s been back to see us several times because after he retired from NASA he fulfilled his lifelong dream to climb Mount Everest.  He took our CDs with him and came back to the clinic to share his adventure.  In 2008, another astronaut, Heidi Stefanyshyn-Piper, took Purple Songs up to the International Space Station.  When she came to meet with the children at TCH, she brought incredible pictures of the CDs floating in zero gravity.

I am often amazed to see how Purple Songs Can Fly brings many elements together which lead to further connections.  For example, I got permission to use Roger Payne’s famous recordings of the songs of humpback whales, so I mixed them with a Purple Song called, “That's Why I Don't Eat Fish”, written by a boy who wanted to be a marine biologist.  The song ended up being played underwater at the NOAA deep-water research facility. We set up two monitors in the Cancer Center and the children were able to interact with the undersea researchers via a live video feed.  Dancers from Hope Stone Dance Company also performed a specially choreographed piece to go with the song and performed it as a part of the event.  So many amazing connections have happened through Purple Songs, with people coming together to offer support and ideas, all of them understanding the importance of music and how songs can affect our lives.

Purple Songs Can Fly in zero gravity in the International Space Station

Who or what has been the greatest influence on your life?

I have had so many incredible influences on my life, so many people, including the children I work with here. But actually, I have a sibling who is severely mentally ill and I think that he has been the greatest influence on my life. Seeing the fragility of life, the fragility of the mind and seeing that it could just as easily have been me, has motivated me to use my own gifts in ways that can hopefully help others.

What advice would you give to someone who, like you, wants to use their gift to help others?

I think it’s important to find inspiration, to strive to learn from other people and other ideas. I love to see people use the influences around them, filter them through their own particular way of doing and seeing and being, and then create something that has never been created before.

How do you find, or seek to find, balance in your life?

I would say that is my biggest life challenge. I haven't found it yet but I do seek it. I know how much of an introvert I am and I do need quiet time by myself. It is interesting that I am all about sound and yet I really crave quiet and I need it daily. I am at the moment fantasizing about a silent retreat. I've never done that but I really think that would be good for me.

What does Houston mean to you?

I love Houston. It’s a great city, with an incredible arts community and an incredibly high level of arts involvement. There are so many artists here working in all different fields and from so many cultures too. I lived in so many places growing up, so I didn't ever have a place that was my home but after I came to Houston to visit a few times, I kept feeling a really strong connection, but I didn’t know why. Then I read a beautiful article about the Native American traditions of why we are connected to a place. It is said that if you have had an ancestor who passes in a place, that is where you will find your roots. My grandmother actually passed in Houston, in a car accident, though it wasn't the place she lived. So in my mind I have had an ancestor who has passed in Houston and that is as good as an explanation as any as to why I feel this connection to this city.

Where is your happy place in Houston?

My happy place is right in here in this purple studio.

What is your favorite restaurant?

I love to eat Japanese food and there are a lot of Japanese restaurants here, so I love anywhere where I can get really good sushi.

What is your Houston secret?

I lived in Japan when I was a little girl, so I have this strong connection to all things Japanese and there is a beautiful Japanese garden in Hermann Park.  Every time I go, it is quiet, peaceful and beautiful.

If you could change one thing about Houston…

My parents live near Seattle, so a long way away from Houston.  If I could change one thing, it would be to have them closer.

Anita was nominated as one of the many Inspiring Houston Women by Trish Morille. 

For more information about Purple Songs Can Fly and to listen to some of the songs Anita has helped the children write, visit the website here.

Purple Songs Can Fly has its own internet radio show on Voice America Kids, hosted by Zachary and Emily who are patients at Texas Children’s Cancer and Hematology Centers and wrote Purple Songs with Anita.  To listen to the show, visit the website here.

Elaine Green and Fran Wilcox

Elaine Green (left) and Fran Wilcox

Elaine Green and Fran Wilcox are the Special Education teachers at Lamar High School. Together they manage a class of students with a variety of learning and physical disabilities. They also work closely with their students’ parents to plan for the transition into further education or employment after graduation. Elaine has been a teacher her whole working life, but before teaching, Fran was a professional musician, playing the horn in orchestras and bands internationally.

What are your stories, Elaine and Fran?

ELAINE – When we both first came to work together at Lamar, I didn’t know her and she didn’t know me. We’d met once because we both worked in Special Education, but to be honest I was a bit leery. We would be sharing this classroom for eight hours a day and what if we didn’t share an educational philosophy? It could not work out well, but actually, it has.

FRAN – Our strengths are totally different and it is totally brilliant the way we work together. Green’s a detailed person…

ELAINE – … and she’s a global person. There are times when I say, “I just can’t see that…” but she just gets it immediately. It is almost a marriage made in heaven. We haven’t had a spat yet and this is our 15^th year together in this room. Strangely enough we found that we both have the same teaching philosophies and these days, I can say something and she will have been ready to say the same thing or vice versa.

We had met once before. I was at Fondren Middle School for about 100 years – ok, for 23 years – and we used to put on this little dance at Christmas which the kids loved. We we invited the participating high schools and that was when Fran was at Lee High School, and the day she came over for that was the only time we’d met before we had to work together.

FRAN – Yes, and you had on that really nice dress. I remember thinking, wow, she’s very dressed up. Maybe I need to tidy up my act a bit!

ELAINE – We both decided to come to Lamar at the same time and we’ve worked out well.  At first, we had a struggle because people expected us to do the same thing as the previous teacher. But I’m sure when we leave here, people will say, “Miss Green and Miss Wilcox used to do blah blah” too.

Anyway, I’m a native Houstonian. I am a mother of two, a widow of ten years, and my kids are 33 and 28. One is in Dallas, he’s an artist and works for the Museum of Modern Art in Fort Worth as an educational curator, so he somehow got into education too. My other one went into architecture. He’s a project manager in construction here in Houston. I take a lot of pride in them both. You know, you want your kids to be happy first of all, whatever their area is. I do take a lot of pride in knowing that they are ok and that they’ve found their niche.

When I was at school, and before I even graduated from Westbury High School, I just knew I wanted to be a teacher. I was in the Future Teachers of America back then and so I went to college to train and somewhere along the line I thought that I’d like to do Special Education. I didn’t have a cousin or a sibling with special needs, I didn’t know anyone, but I just really wanted to do that. Then I decided to get certified in Special Education and Elementary Education at the same time. When I started teaching Special Ed, I thought I’d do that for a few years and then go to teach elementary. Well, forty years later, here I sit. I’ve never done anything else. But she’s got a much more interesting story!

FRAN – I was born in New Jersey and had an undergraduate degree in Music Education, K through 12. I wanted to have performance degree but my parents would not allow me to do that, they said I had to have something to fall back on. But I knew was never going to be a Band Director. I did my student teaching with the band and I had no patience. I was really fortunate when I did my student teaching that I got to work with some students with hearing impairments and I absolutely loved that room. The kids in there were great and asked if I could do that full time instead, but they wouldn’t let me. But I knew right then that if I could never play my horn again, I would want to work with kids with special needs, I just knew it. But I went to Rice with a music fellowship and then played professionally in Colombia, South America, for a while. When I came back, I played with the Houston Ballet, substituted with the Houston Symphony and did the Opera tour. Then I developed Bells’ Palsy in my face and that pretty much ended my career overnight. I was 31.

I still play in a Czech band – my dad’s side of the family is Czech so it’s one of those ‘get in touch with your roots’ things – but these days I’m at the back only playing the up-beats. I put the PAH in the oompah! I think I could keel over back there and nobody would notice!  You see, because the Bells’ Palsy affected the nerve at the front of my face, sometimes I sound horrible and sometimes I sound great and think, hey, I wish I could still do this!

So I needed to find another career and it was always in the back of my mind that I had really enjoyed those kids from student teaching. I ended up working in vocational rehab and from there to managing a workshop for adults with hearing impairments and addictions and some folks with mental health issues. It was there that I was really introduced to the Life Skills population. I didn’t really enjoy it, but two women I worked with asked why I didn’t become a self-contained teacher because I loved working with all the clients, but I wasn’t very good at managing the staff. I did my Alternative Certification instead and ended up at Lee, then Houston Community College, and then I came to Lamar and that’s history.

On a personal level, because I was a musician, it took a long time for me to really settle down, but now I have a very important relationship in my life, and my sister and her family are down here and they are super important to me. I’m very close to my nieces, my sister and her husband and then I have my family at home in New Jersey. I’m the oldest of six. My sister Cathy is a teacher’s assistant working with special needs kids, and I am very proud of her.

Why do you do what you do?

ELAINE – At the moment we have 20 kids in the class, but we’ve had 34 at one time, it was nuts in here! We’ve never wanted this classroom to be a ‘holding tank’ so to speak. Our goal is to get the kids involved with the school and not to be the ‘group down in the basement’. We want to make them as independent as possible and that’s been our goal from the very beginning.  I guess if you get to the point where you don’t get some kind of gratification from that work, then it’s time to say ‘hang it up’, but we still both do. When one of the kids does something wonderful, it’s still very rewarding, and that’s the bottom line. We do it because we both love it.

FRAN – Yup, we just love these kids.

At a Lamar High School Pep Rally - October 2013

What advice would you give to someone coming new to teaching in Special Education?

FRAN – Volunteer first! Because Green and I have such a good relationship, we can spell each other.  Sometimes if she needs to do paperwork or call a parent she’ll go into our office, and I’ll cover the class room. We figured that out for each other, but if you were just a single teacher, I’d don’t know how you would do it.

ELAINE – That’s right, keeping on top of the paperwork can be very daunting. There are so many state requirements, even for the regular teachers. My niece came and volunteered in here with us a while ago and then decided she wanted to become a teacher too. Because she had volunteered first, she knew what she was getting into. I guess that would be my advice, you need to know that all of the stuff, the paperwork etc, can take away from what you want to do. Sometimes I say in meetings, “If we didn’t have the kids, we could keep up with all the paperwork! These darn kids just get in our way!” I’m joking of course, but that’s how it feels sometimes. The kids must be our priority, and although this other stuff is essential it must come second with us.

FRAN – I’d say if your passion is to work with our guys, just keep it pure. And you do have to have a passion – we both still have that passion. Even on days when we know we are dragging, the kids just spark us and we get so much from them. To share their “Aha!” moments and their laughs if they get a joke is just wonderful. We had a few minutes spare today and we played Hangman together on the board. Everyone was involved and laughing, it was great.

How to do you find, or seek to find, balance in your life?

ELAINE – We both have friends, but we are also friends with each other outside school too. We go out together sometimes after school and have Mexican food and a margarita. We talk about the day and try to work out how to fix things. We’ve even, at a restaurant, got a napkin and drawn up a list of pros and cons for a problem.

FRAN – Sometimes we get our toenails done too!

ELAINE – We also take yoga, and that’s our gift to ourselves. We don’t let anyone interfere with our Tuesday afternoons. We have a group of ladies that get together to do yoga and then go get dinner after that. We all get our balance and then we get our food!

FRAN – As well as that, I love to ride my bike and I used to run marathons, because of that I have this whole world of friends. I’ve just bought a kayak so that’s a new adventure. I paddled to the Christmas lights down in Dickinson last year – you decorate your canoe and paddle at night which was the most fun thing. And I love bird-watching. I’m real diversified and I have all sorts of groups of friends.  I’m really not a wild child or anything, but I don’t stop still very often.

What does Houston mean to you?

ELAINE – For me, it’s roots. I didn’t pick Houston, I was born here, my parents were here and my husband’s parents were here, so it’s about roots. I met my husband in high school and when we got married after college and I guess Houston means family to us. We bought a house ten minutes from where we each lived because we wanted to be around our parents as they got older, which we were. We were just a phone call away and we had many of those between the two sets of parents as they got older.

Now my children may break the link to Houston, but that’s ok, I want them to be happy. They are both of them looking further afield, and that’s fine because it’ll give me some nice place to visit.

FRAN – I loved playing my horn because it allowed me to travel. I travelled around Europe on a rail pass with a brass quartet and we travelled all over. I also love all things British and I did once apply for a scholarship to a school in London. I had a dream of living in one of these little villages where Miss Marple would have lived, where you could ride your bike and there were flowers everywhere, that would have been my ideal, even if New Jersey was always my home. At first Houston was just about my job, but now I have a lot of friends here, and I like Houston now, though it took a while for me to settle.

Where is your happy place in Houston?

ELAINE – Probably at my home with my family and my dogs, that’s my happy place. And also on my yoga mat. It’s very easy for me to find a happy place at yoga. For ten years we’ve been doing it and we consider it a gift to ourselves. It took me about two years to get to that point where things weren’t buzzing around my head, but now I find that spot on my mat and all of that other stuff outside is gone for an hour. Occasionally I have to fight to get it out but most times it’s just gone.

FRAN – I have several. On the couch, just being quiet, or sitting on the back porch watching the birds at the many bird feeders we have. We feed the hummingbirds and we see all the migratory birds come by, which is really cool. And I love being out on my bike in the country and actually, I’m happy in the classroom too, and also with my sister and her kids. You know, I have lots of happy places, I’m just quite a happy person.

What is your favorite restaurant?

FRAN – Carmelita’s on Bellaire Boulevard is right between both our houses, and then there’s El Ranchero and …

ELAINE – Basically, we just love Mexican neighborhood restaurants!

What is your Houston secret?

ELAINE – I think a secret that many people don’t know about is the beer can house. I saw it years ago as a child and then again recently with the kids. It’s off Washington, right in the middle of all these homes and people come from all over just to see it. The man who made it has gone but it’s still maintained by the same people that run the Art Car Parade – and that’s another Houston secret that everyone should know about, it’s fantastic!

And of course, there are the bats on Waugh Drive. Unlike in Austin where the bats go away on migration, our bats never leave. Bats all year round! Aren’t we lucky?

FRAN – It’s not really Houston, but a great day out from here is to Brazos Bend State Park to see the alligators, it’s just fantastic, and there’s amazing birdlife too. Also, there’s the Azalea Trail here in the spring which is also a wonderful thing to go to. We rode our bikes one year, and ate at every stop! The azaleas have such a short blooming time, it’s really worth going to see.

If you could change one thing about Houston…

ELAINE – the summer heat, it’s just too hot. When even the kids can’t go out to play, it’s just too much, even for us natives.

FRAN – Absolutely right, and because it’s hot most people don’t get to know their neighbors very well because we stay indoors for the greater part of the year, which is a shame.

Diane Zola

Diane Zola is the Director of Artistic Administration for Houston Grand Opera (HGO), having joined the company as Director of the young artist program, the Houston Grand Opera Studio. She also assisted the Bolshoi Opera in Moscow create its own young artist program. She began her career as an opera singer and continues to give masterclasses to singers at major opera houses and music festivals all over the world and regularly served on the judging panels for prestigious international vocal competitions.  In 2012, she suffered severe injuries when she was hit by a car, but continued her work for HGO throughout her recovery in hospital and her rehabilitation period at home.

What’s your story, Diane?

My grandparents emigrated from Ukraine to Canada and both of my parents grew up as Canadians. My mom had been teaching in the States and when they got married they decided to live in the States permanently. My parents became US citizens after my sister and I were born. I think having that heritage is really important in everything I do. We were very ethnically-oriented and committed to the Ukrainian Catholic Church; I grew up with a mother and a father who felt it was essential to give back and to do things for people and to help someone who was down. I think that has impacted my life tremendously.

I grew up in Detroit at a time before the city started its downward spiral, when it was an exciting city with a lot going on. Ours was a really musical family, my poor mother was my first piano teacher and I think I caused her probably more agony during those piano lessons than any other pupil she taught. My dad had a wonderful tenor voice and sang in the church choir with me and my sister.  I played the piano and the violin – I also played the trombone for one year in my senior year at high school, learning just enough to be the third trombone in the jazz band.

We also had a real interest in other countries and other nationalities’ customs.  I couldn’t understand how you could live in a city like Detroit and not go over the river to Canada. There were so many people I was at school with who had never been to Windsor, or had never taken a trip to Toronto which was less than four hours away!  The one big regret in my life is that I didn’t learn to speak Ukrainian fluently. It was not because our parents didn’t try, it is a skill I really could have used later in my life, especially now with my work in Eastern Europe.

I wanted to be a singer from the time I was 16. Before that I wanted to be a teacher or a nun, or both. I remember my mom saying, “If you’re going to enter the convent, then you are going to go to university and live out in the world first.” Then by the time I was 16, I had realized that I had a talent that people said was somewhat special and after that, I just wanted to sing.

I was maybe at times a little too focused on just the singing, I could have broadened some horizons, but I put everything I had into it. I struggled for a lot of years though I had some success.  Because I had played the violin for so long, I had a big interest in orchestral music and chamber music and I used to go to all those concerts while I was in school. I feel it helped round me out to be the person I am and gave me what I bring to work in my job today.  I have a rounded esthetic for singers and music-making, about how voices carry, how well I hear someone singing a role and how different it is to sing Strauss as opposed to Verdi or Wagner to Mozart.  I have an understanding of all that.

However, I had a voice that people didn’t know what to do with. I had a really high voice, but I also had what I would describe as an Eastern European sound with steel to it. I was floundering for a year after getting my Masters, so I cooked in a monastery in Toronto for a year while I lived with my aunt and uncle. These wonderful priests had known me since I was young because my uncle belonged to the order. They ran a high school and there was another lady from the Ukraine who cooked too so when I wasn’t cooking I did proofreading for the Ukrainian English magazine. It was a fascinating year for me, but I was still struggling with what to do vocally, so I started my doctorate at the University of Texas. My parents so wanted me to finish my doctorate because everyone felt that I could teach then, but I really didn’t want to teach in a voice studio. So finally I said, “That’s it!” and I moved to New York so that I could struggle with a lot of other performers there!

I worked in a law firm and I actually worked alongside Renee Fleming who is now an internationally-renowned soprano! We both worked there along with about 25 other singers and they’d let us come and go. So I’d go to Europe for a while and then come back to New York and there would still be a job for me. Finally though, one has to face reality. I had certain dreams – I wanted to be married, I wanted to have children and I wanted to sing – and none of those things were happening! Finally a job came up at Columbia Artists Management. I was someone who helped a lot of people.  With my singer friends, I took care of them, of their mail and their personal responsibilities when they were away, and I went to performances like crazy so I knew voices and the repertoire.  I ended up being an artists’ manager for ten years, at Columbia Artists for a while and then I founded my own management. In that time, I also travelled for a while with mezzo-soprano, Dolora Zajick, as her personal assistant and I also drove Tatiana Troyanos, who was my personal idol. I think she was one of the greatest singers who ever walked the face of the earth.

I was then bought out by a medium-sized management and as much as I loved the work I was doing with the singers, I found it challenging and at times disappointing. As an agent, you are never really part of the artistic process and that bothered me. If things went well, you never really had a part in it, and if things didn’t go well, it was all your fault! OK, I can be the bad guy up to a point, but let’s be realistic, if you didn’t sing well, it’s not my fault!

Diane Zola giving a masterclass to young singers at the
Cincinnati Conservatory of Music residency in Spoleto, Italy
(photo by Betsy Kershner)

During that time I was managing a number of singers from the Houston Grand Opera Studio so I was in Houston a lot. One of my dearest friends, Gayletha Nichols, was Director of the HGO Studio at the time – we had met in Germany during the 1980s when we were both doing auditions. Gayletha and I would visit about what we wanted to do with our lives and I said, “I really want to work for a company and be part of a family where everyone is a team, and if things go well you are part of that team and if things go badly, you are part of that team also, not just a third wheel.” Then Gayletha received an invitation to go to the Met to be director of the National Council Auditions and she said, “I really think you need to do this job.”

I already knew HGO’s General Director David Gockley, so I applied for the position and it was quite a process to go through and then, all of a sudden I was moving to Houston. I never thought I would leave New York City, but on my birthday, July 31^st, 2000, I moved to Houston to be the Director of the Houston Grand Opera Studio.  It’s been an amazing trip. I can’t believe I am in my 14^th season at HGO.

When David Gockley left Houston for San Francisco, he took the Artistic Administrator with him. So in September of 2005 I become HGO’s Artistic Administrator. It was extremely challenging at first as I continued as the Director of the HGO Studio for an additional 6 months, and tried to adapt to my new position at the same time.

It was a challenge to let go of the Opera Studio in a lot of ways, but as time has gone on, it’s has become easier.  Plus I found another way that I can still work with young singers. I have been going to Moscow since 2001 to work with young singers there and had brought a number of the young singers to Houston to be members of the Studio. Then the Bolshoi Opera decided to start its own young artists program and asked me to act as their consultant to help develop a business plan and launch their studio. That was so exciting.  I make maybe three trips to Moscow each year. I’ve also been very active in judging vocal competitions, whether it’s the Metropolitan Opera’s competition in New York or competitions elsewhere in the States or in Europe. I was recently in Warsaw to judge the Moniuszcko Competition.

Why do you do what you do?

It’s exciting to be at the very beginning of the process of a production, talking about who the artists are going to be and talking to the directors and conductors about the singers they want, then trying to put all the puzzle pieces together. To watch it bloom like a flower on the stage is so rewarding.  I love what I do – most of the time! We do sometimes have our disappointments.

I have a great team that I work with, starting with Mark Lear, who is the Associate Artistic Administrator.  He is an amazing support. Without Mark, I would truly be lost.  People like Mark are not working for themselves, they are working to make HGO the very best we can make it, it’s so gratifying.

Diane Zola as La Duchesse de Crackentorp in
HGO's La Fille du Regiment in 2007

Sometimes I think I’m a little selfish, and then I think, “But you are bringing such beauty to the world, a beauty that the world needs.” Not everyone can be a doctor and save lives, but I think maybe we save a soul or a heart once in a while with the music we put on stage. It sounds a little Pollyanna-ish, but that’s how I feel.

Who has been the greatest influence on your life?

Overall it’s my mom because she was someone who just loved learning and loved people.  It was never too much to add one more person to the family, whether it was an exchange student or a friend staying with us while they were ill. This went on my whole life and that was part of both my mom’s and my dad’s belief in being good Catholics, good Christians, and that again has impacted me.  You know, my father was a saint! It would be one old lady after the next who was put in the spare bedroom and he never complained! He would say to Mom, “We’ve got to do this.” You know, one time they went to the station to pick up an exchange student from Switzerland and when they got there, there were a handful of kids from Liberia with nowhere to go, so they took one of them home. I grew up with that esthetic, I was so fortunate.

What advice would you give to a young singer who was perhaps struggling, like you did, to find their place?

I always say that there is life after singing. Like a lot of young singers, I felt my life would be over if I couldn’t sing, but life isn’t over at all. If you want to stay in the field, there is so much to do, whether it’s teaching or mentoring or working in a school or opera house. You know, what’s wrong with putting together contracts and schedules?  It’s exciting and fulfilling.  I think that the biggest thing is to keep your options open, don’t ever think, “I’ll never do that” because you should never say never. I learned that the hard way!

How to do you find, or seek to find, balance in your life?

It’s something I still struggle with.  It’s really easy when we are in the heat of production to have no balance at all. All you do is come to work and go home and that doesn’t make for someone who uses their time well. So I’ve been much more committed to making sure I am exercising, especially after the two accidents I had.I was badly injured when I was hit by a car last year and I struggled to recuperate. When I was finally fit to travel again this spring, I went to Europe and I fell, breaking my foot and my wrist. All that has given me a lot of pause for thought about what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. It has also helped me think a lot more about finding balance in life and remembering that you have to take time to smell the roses.

Exercise for me is now about building my body back. I have always struggled with my weight, but now I am back on the Weight Watchers program and I’m really being conscious of what I’m eating. I turned 60 this summer and I have to think seriously about living alone, taking care of myself and trying to remain as healthy as I possibly can. Sometimes that means giving up that piece of cake or that hamburger – and I really love good hamburgers, and the French fries and the glass of wine with it, but I was enjoying all of that a little too much in the last year!

But balance is also about saying, “I’m turning the cell phone off right now for the rest of the evening.” I never take a day when I don’t look at emails, but though I still struggle with putting work away, I’ve made a commitment to put the cell phone away when I go out for dinner with a friend, and that’s a big step. If we are in production, it’s a little different because if an artist gets sick they need to be able to contact me. But when we are not in production, it’s fine.

I also made time this summer to go out to dinner and lunch more with friends – you say all year that you are going to do it and then all of a sudden it’s September and the start of the opera season, and then suddenly it’s May and you haven’t done any of it.  So I’ve been putting myself out there a little more. I’ve also been making myself go to bed a little earlier so I can read more. Reading is a real source of peace and it takes me to another world which is really fabulous.

What does Houston mean to you?

I’m sure so many people are going to say this but, as a community, the generosity of Houstonians is unbelievable. I saw this first hand when I moved here in 2000, people took care of me and introduced me to the city.  Then last year, through my struggles after the car accident when I couldn’t do anything, the help that I received was truly incredible. I’ve also watched how people help the young artists that come to Houston. I’m not talking about the people that give money, though of course that is greatly appreciated, it’s about the people who give their time, the people who do an extra ride into town to pick someone up to go to the airport or take them to a doctor. You don’t see that generosity of time and generosity of spirit in a lot of places.  I think that is what Houston means to me.

Houston Grand Opera's AIDA
with Dolora Zajick and Liudmiyla Monastyrska
Photo by Lynn Lane

Where is your happy place in Houston?

That is the hardest question!  One of them is in the Wortham Theater. When a production works, when it is just going, it makes me so proud. Not proud of myself but proud what we have brought to the public, bringing a composer to life or a singer that we are introducing to everyone, that’s a happy place for me.

Another happy place for me is to go to church at St Anne’s. I find real peace there, even when I’m really pushed. We can go to mass a million different times between Saturday night and Sunday night, but there’s a certain peace that I find by going and just sitting being quiet.

I also used to love to go to Memorial Park to walk, enjoying the trees and the wildlife, but of course I can’t do that right now and I miss it. I would still enjoy it, even with all the trees that are gone.

What is your favorite restaurant?

That’s hard too, because Houston is so full of so many good restaurants, but I love Backstreet Café. It’s in my neighborhood and I love that I can sit in a comfy cozy room there or in the sunnier back room or, when the weather is beautiful in January and February, I can sit outside. I love the food there, and I love to go to Barnaby’s on Shepherd for hamburgers! I have French fries and a glass of red wine and that for me is absolute heaven!

What is your Houston secret?

I think that the red beans and rice at Treebeards restaurant on Market Square just says “Houston” to me, even though I know it’s really Cajun and from New Orleans.

If you could change one thing about Houston…

The summer weather, without a doubt! I know people say that the humidity is good for your skin, but I just can’t stand it! I’d rather just spritz my face! Yes, the weather would be the one thing I’d change, along with getting more people to know about Houston Grand Opera!

For more information about the Houston Grand Opera’s performances, of which Diane is so proud, please visit www.hgo.org.

Kristina Hultén

Kristina Hultén moved to Houston from Sweden in 1997.  She is Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine, specializing in research to combat pediatric infectious diseases. She conducts a children’s church choir and has three sons, Jakob, David and Philip.

What’s your story, Tina?

I was born near Stockholm in Sweden and I grew up not far from there in Västerås.  I went to a performing arts school from 4^th through 9^th grade, and played the piano and sang in choirs.  But I was torn between going into natural sciences and music, so I went into a natural sciences high school program but did all the music I could with the performing arts students on the side.  My high school was built in the 1500s and it is one of the very few high schools that has a cathedral on its school yard which I think is pretty cool. 

Then, at the end of school I was again torn about what to do –sciences or music. I figured that I didn’t want to be a piano teacher and I really liked analytical thinking, so I went into the sciences.  I always really loved medicine, and I wanted to do research so I did a PhD in infectious diseases and clinical microbiology, and as part of that I came over to Houston.  I did a two month fellowship at the VA for Baylor College of Medicine in my PhD research area, Helicobacter pylori, so they invited me to come back when I was done. 

I had never been to Texas before I came here for the first time in 1994.   I had thought I really want to go to Paris and speak French, but my husband Thomas said, “You know, the United States would be fabulous!”  So I came here for two months and was just astounded by how friendly people were and what a great research place I ended up working at.  I really loved it and we decided we would both come back.  I got a grant and we came back in 1997 for a year to begin with and then we stayed. 

I was married before I came but all my children were born here.  Thomas is a trombone player – he plays classical trombone and jazz trombone and he’s also a composer and arranger.  He works with the Houston Grand Opera and the Houston Ballet as Principal trombone and then does a bunch of freelance stuff on the side – jazz, shows, composing and arranging.

I work with a research group in infectious diseases and with two other researchers, more senior than I am, who had started two programs before I got here, relating to Streptococcus pneumoniae and Staphylococcus aureus.  One of the studies is confined to patients at Texas Children’s Hospital and the other involves eight different children’s hospitals in the United States.  They are prospective surveillance studies, meaning that we collect isolates and follow epidemiologic changes over time. We follow changes in antibiotic resistance, we analyze if there are certain strains associated with certain disease presentations, and so on.

What we learn can be used in different ways. In the case of Streptococcus pneumoniae we are interested in knowing what changes occur after the introduction of a vaccine. After one pediatric vaccine had been introduced several years ago we and other research groups noticed that a few strains that were not part of the vaccine became more common and so the vaccine was improved [by others] and now covers for these strains as well. Now we are following the changes after the new vaccine is being used. These vaccines have greatly reduced invasive pneumococcal diseases in children.

With the Staphylococcus aureus research at Texas Children’s Hospital, the research also involves epidemiology and resistance surveillance. There is no Staph vaccine in use, but there are still changes in the types of strains that occur and Staph germs are very adaptable to new challenges. For example, in the early 2000’s we observed a quite sudden increase in methicillin resistant Staph aureus (MRSA) infections in the community, both skin and more severe infections. We hypothesized there must be a particularly virulent gene, or strain, that caused the severe infections. Because of our ongoing study, we had the materials necessary to investigate what was going on in our community here in Houston and we studied a large number of bacterial isolates in the lab using different methods. We looked for specific virulence genes and compared if different isolates were genetically related to each other and we analyzed if there was a difference between strains from different types of infection.

What we found was that there was a particular clone that ”moved in” and took over. This clone was the cause of almost all of the community MRSA infections, regardless of severity. Others reported the same strain causing adult infections as it spread in many parts of the United States at the same time. We sequenced one of the isolates together with scientists at the Genome Center at Baylor College of Medicine to find out what made this particular strain so successful. While a few genes have been identified as ”of interest”, there is no easy answer.  We, and many other research groups in the United States, use different methods and approaches to understand better what makes a Staph germ successful – with the goal of finding better treatments and reducing or preventing disease.

Is there an end point to my field of research?  There are smaller parts of the larger issue that have been completed and that we know, but will there be a day when we completely understand how the bacteria function and change so we can combat them successfully? There is a lot of research yet to be done to reach that point when it comes to Staph infections. But the methods and approaches change as we learn more and as new techniques become available. In the case of Streptococcus pneumoniae it is too early to tell after the latest vaccine.  The research in infectious diseases at Texas Children’s Hospital is really important to me, very motivating. I am absolutely fascinated by the microbes and how they continuously evolve.  I think it’s a great area of research – but then everyone says that about their research interest, don’t they? 

What does Houston mean to you?

We’ve been here for 16 years, so that’s quite a while, and for the most part I feel at home.  When you have had your children somewhere and raise them there, you get your roots there with the kids.  As Europeans coming to the US, we think that there are so many things that are alike, but then you start realizing the things that are not alike.  Things that you think would be simple, like figuring out which toothpaste to use, or which laundry detergent works, because all of a sudden they are not exactly the same.  In Sweden, there are ten brands to choose from and here there are 200!  Then there is the banking system, the social security, the differences in utilities, schools and healthcare etc. So, there are lots of things to learn. When we first came, we were struck by the kindness shown to us by people that barely knew us. One example: when we had our first child, less than a year after our arrival, my first work place threw us a baby shower. That was just amazing – shockingly generous to us Swedes.  The kindness we were offered definitely helped us feel at home.

Also what I think is really neat about Houston are the Arts.  I am so proud of how the whole arts community is growing – just take the quality of the Opera, it is inspiring to read the program and see all the great ideas.  The Medical Center, it’s the same thing, it’s growing.  What I like the best about Houston is that people want to do the best they can.  I think people work hard but they really have a desire for quality, you see that in the research area, at Baylor and Texas Children’s, this wish to improve and I see that in the Arts scene and in other areas too. 

What advice would you give to someone new to the United States?

I believe you must find places where you feel at home and where you connect.  For us, we had connections here already when we came, a brass player and his wife.  He actually used to be a teacher of one of Thomas’s good friends in Sweden.  We had our friend’s sister here too and so having those connections helped us to get established. Our new friends went to First Presbyterian Church and invited us to go there.  So we went and discovered a Christian community we could be part of. The big pull back then was the sermons, believe it or not. But there was also a fabulous choir, which I started singing in, and we found we had something in common.  When you go somewhere as a newcomer, find people with a common purpose and somewhere to settle.  Of course when you have kids, school helps you, but the church has been very important for us to get established and to feel at home.

I still sing in the choir at First Presbyterian Church and I also lead a 3^rd to 5^th grade children’s chorus called the Alleluia Choir.  It’s really, really fun – I have three boys in the choir, otherwise it is mainly formed by girls.  They are all great little singers. 

Who has been the greatest influence on your life?

I think my parents have been very influential in how I approach life.  They were always very unselfish and they always worked really hard but always worked hard for others.  They were both teachers first and education was important to them, but they also worked for the church.  They gave up their teaching careers to go into full time positions – my mom working for a Salvation Army community center where she helped a tremendous number of people, either immigrants or single moms on a fixed budget.  To see how she helped them navigate their tragedies and make a difference was very inspirational to me.  You know, in general, any person who does things for other people, but not for personal gains, really inspire me.

How to do you find, or seek to find, balance in your life?

Ha ha! That’s easy, I don’t have balance!  I think it’s a constant struggle. I would like to spend a lot more time at work, a lot more time for it to feel meaningful and to let me do what I need to get done.  And I would like to spend a lot more time with my kids because they are growing up and they are fantastic, and it is just magical to see them become themselves, to find themselves.  They are their own individuals already when they are born, but to see them discover that personality is really neat.  My boys are 15, 12 and almost 11, and of course I would want to be there with them to see them take every breath.  But they certainly don’t need me there all the time to grow.  It is a balance, right?  And it’s good.  

I guess the struggle to find balance is, in itself, a good thing too, if you reflect upon it, because you have to remind yourself constantly what’s important.

Where is your happy place in Houston?

I have lots of happy places, but really I carry happy with me. I am happy when I go to work and I’m happy when I go home to see my kids, and I’m happy with I sit down in choir and I get to sing. I’m happy when I get to go to the opera and hear a great performance, and so it continues.

What is your favorite restaurant?

OK, if people come from Sweden, we want them to go to Pappasito’s because we want them to have those fajitas, or to Goode Company because they need good Texas Barbecue.  But I like to go to Café Rabelais because they have great mussels and I like to go with the kids to Skeeters because I think it’s just so nice and friendly.  Otherwise we love to eat at home.

What is your Houston secret?

I try to make everybody go to the Opera. I know I am repeating myself, but I think we have a great arts scene here and people aren’t aware of that.

If you could change one thing about Houston

First, I would end all the senseless shootings. Then, I would make people stop texting when they drive and become more patient as drivers. I think there is an intolerance and rudeness about driving in this city, and everybody seems to be putting themselves first.