Kathy Sheperd
Kathy Sheperd has been playing first violin with the Boston Philharmonic since its earliest days over thirty years ago, and during that time she has come to see how it falls within the bigger picture of why she plays. Marveling at time’s ability to weave uncanny connections between her experiences, she shares what the years have taught her and what she has learned about giving back through music.
“You can only hope that some things in life will have a chance to come full circle. You get to see how it’s all tied together, how it all connects.” Kathy seems amazed at the connections time has shown her as she thinks back over the years. “I went to the New England Conservatory at the same time as Linda Watson,” she says, referring to the guest soprano whose Wagner performance was an electrifying highlight of the 2009/2010 BPO season. ”I was her RA in the dorms! Can you even believe that?” There is contagious excitement in Kathy’s voice; she speaks her words emphatically and draws her listener in as she leaps from one thought to the next, with gestures to match. “I mean Linda Watson is now an internationally renowned star, and when she came for the concert we just looked at each other and started laughing because you start to think back to all the old times. To have her come back and do her thing here was just…it was one of those full circle things, you know? To experience that is just so amazing.”
This anecdote is only one of the details of the past that has come around, years later, in a different light. But what is more inspiring to Kathy and what fuels her to give back through music is her ability to glean meaning and purpose from her experiences. “I’ve made it to the point in my life where I think, ‘Well, what’s the next chunk?’. I’ve raised two wonderful children along with my loving husband and I have this great career, and I want to give back.” Kathy has long been interested in the therapeutic benefits of musical expression outside the concert hall, having earned a master’s degree in Expressive Therapy and worked for several years with siblings of autistic children. “With expressive therapy you start thinking about the emotional issues behind how people express themselves, and through music and art and dance you can get at these issues in a different way. Everybody—everybody—has some creative part of them that in order to be a healthy human being should have an opportunity to be expressed.” This basic human need for musical expression, and the belief that everyone should have access to it, led Kathy to create her own musical ensemble to open up the experience of performing to more people. “I live in Sherborn, in a beautiful community—it’s so blinkin’ beautiful it’s ridiculous,” she interrupts herself with a side note of disbelief—“and about twenty years ago I founded the Sherborn String Ensemble. Some of the parents of the kids I teach would say, ‘Well, I used to play an instrument but I stopped,’ and I said, ‘Well, that’s ridiculous, why’d you stop?’ So we all just started playing easier arrangements together,” and the Sherborn String Ensemble was born. Every year they have a holiday fundraiser; hearing Kathy’s description is like being there in person as she acts out all the instruments being played, including guitar, mandolin—and recorder, which she welcomed to the group even though it is not a string instrument. “It’s a no pressure, good time. Anyone who wants to play can.”
The ensemble started playing in libraries, nursing homes and at community events, and Kathy explains how, through one of the players who works as a child life specialist at the pediatric oncology ward at UMass medical center, members of the group began playing in hospitals—a cause that is very close to her heart. “Playing hospital bedside is one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done,” says Kathy, and demeanor takes on a new level of gravity. Sometimes we’ll play for people who are too young to express what they want. To bring that kind of release in a time of trouble…it’s just good to get all that out.” Kathy goes on to describe specific memories of playing for patients and their families and the feeling the musicians had of being a part of something bigger. She has coined the term “Music Ministry” to try to encompass the scope and the spiritual component of what they seek to do. “It’s pretty heavy duty. It gets to me in the same way as when I can’t talk at the end of a huge orchestral deal, you know.”
When Kathy describes how the Boston Philharmonic fits in with the rest of her musical experiences, she calls it the “glue” of her professional life, and says, “Ben’s got his own Music Ministry going on.” Kathy has played with the orchestra since its earliest days thirty two years ago; even when she lived in California for a couple of years she would come back to play in winter concerts, “so my foot was never really out the door, and when I came back it was totally in the door.” Thinking back over the years, she says, “What haven’t I learned from Ben? Patience, endurance, not to mention a whole bunch of new music that’s broadened my horizons. And look at the things you get to learn about yourself as a person, about the whole musical world!” Just as she constantly seeks ways to bring music to everyone in the community with her string ensemble, Kathy delights in bringing others to share the BPO concert experience whenever she can, and she tells a story of how she brought the team of veterinarians who operated on her horse to hear Mahler’s Second Symphony in Symphony Hall to thank them. “None of these doctor horsy people were really much into coming to hear a concert at first, but then they loved it! And I was so excited to have everyone come and hear, of all things, the Resurrection Symphony! I practically had the horse come in too!” she adds with her big hearty laugh.
At the mention of friendships in the orchestra, Kathy pulls out a photo of the group of long time orchestra members she has forged strong bonds with over the years, and talks about all the laughter and tears they have shared onstage and off. “How often do you get a hundred people doing the same thing at the same time and experience it live? It doesn’t happen anywhere else! You can feel it, those moments you are united with the music, with these people that you’ve been through it all with.”
For Kathy, these moments when the music expresses the inexpressible in all of us are what gives performance its purpose, and it is what she finds in both her own playing and the Boston Philharmonic. “Classical music cuts through everything: class, race, gender, anything. It cuts right through and get to the heart. Ben talks about shining eyes—well, I see the shining tears a lot too. That’s what it is, you know? That’s about it right there.”
Written by Pamela Feo