UC Davis experts: Children and the arts

The following UC Davis faculty members are available to speak on topics related to children and the arts. Spanish-language media members, please note fluent Spanish speakers Francisco Alarcón, Pablo Ortiz and Victor Montoya. If you need information on a topic not listed, please contact Claudia Morain at the UC Davis News Service, (530) 752-9841, cmmorain@ucdavis.edu.

MUSIC

• Classic children's music
• Composing children's music

LITERATURE

• Poetry for and by children
• Mark Twain on kids
• Children's literature

EDUCATIONAL OUTREACH

• Learning through hands-on art
• Universities' role

MUSIC

Classic children's music

UC Davis' pianist-in-residence, Lara Downes, can tell the stories behind some of the most famous music written for children by composers such as Debussy, Bartok, Schumann and Villalobos. Downes, a concert pianist who made her debut performance at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall in 1988, has studied the composers in their culture as well as their personal and musical history. Contact: Lara Downes, Mondavi Center , (530) 297-0569, laradownes@hotmail.com.

Composing children's music

UC Davis music professor Pablo Ortiz can talk both about issues in creating ambitious "concert" music for children and what contemporary composers are doing to develop musical audiences at a young age. An award-winning composer of 27 years, Ortiz composed choral music to accompany Francisco X. Alarcón's bilingual poetry volume for children, "Jitomatoes Risueñas" ("Laughing Tomatoes") that is performed by the Piedmont Choirs of Oakland. He also composed the music for an upcoming CD of Alarcón's children's poetry performed by members of the Cuarteto Latinoamericana of Mexico City and Pittsburg, Pa. Contact: Pablo Ortiz, (fluent in Spanish) Music, (530) 752-7509, pvortiz@ucdavis.edu.

LITERATURE

Poetry for and by children

Poet and educator Francisco X. Alarcón of UC Davis can talk about how to reach children's creative center through poetry. Winner of numerous national awards for his seasonal poems, Alarcón writes bilingual poems about the Hispanic American experience for children. His children's books include "Jitomatoes Risueñas" ("Laughing Tomatoes") and "From the Bellybutton of the Moon." A teacher of college Spanish composition, Alarcón also wrote a best-selling high-school textbook on Spanish for Spanish speakers. He gives poetry workshops to elementary-school children and their parents throughout California. Contact: Francisco X. Alarcón, (fluent in Spanish) Spanish, (530) 752-1022, fjalarcon@ucdavis.edu.

Mark Twain on kids

UC Davis English professor and Mark Twain scholar Linda Morris can talk about "Tom Sawyer" and "Prince and the Pauper" in relationship to Twain's career and how the two books were representative of changing tastes and expectations for children and adolescent literature. Morris can also discuss the representation of boys vs. girls in the late 19th century and universal themes found in the stories, such as the need for a future leader to go through trials and childhood fears and fantasies. Morris' teaching and research areas are late 19th-century American literature, Mark Twain, American humor and African-American literature. Contact: Linda Morris, English, (530) 752-1696, lamorris@ucdavis.edu.

Children's literature

John Boe, an English lecturer at UC Davis, can talk about the range of children's literature from Mother Goose to "Alice in Wonderland" and Harry Potter, with special focus on story telling. Boe has taught children's literature courses for nearly 30 years, 20 years at UC Davis. He is a writer, editor, teacher and storyteller, and his books include "Life Itself: Messiness Is Next to Goddessness and Other Essays," which includes essays on children's literature, and "Your Joke Is in the E-Mail." Contact: John Boe, English, jdboe@ucdavis.edu, (530) 752-4170.

EDUCATIONAL OUTREACH

Learning through art

UC Davis' pianist-in-residence, Lara Downes, can talk about improving children's individual learning through the arts. Under her direction, UC Davis launched the Summer Arts Institute in 2003, bringing internationally renowned composers and musical performers to campus to inspire a group of more than 50 students who could be the next generation of composers and musical performers. She also leads an effort to coordinate the teaching efforts of UC Davis art, theater, dance and music students who reach elementary-school children in the Sacramento region, using the arts as the medium. The program, Artsbridge, is a University of California-wide public K-12 outreach program funded by the state Legislature in 1999 that other universities nationwide are now emulating. Contact: Lara Downes, Mondavi Center, (530) 304-3179 cell, lmdownes@ucdavis.edu.

Universities' role

Universities can fulfill an essential mission in educating children about the performing arts, says Joyce Donaldson, director of arts education for the UC Davis Mondavi Center. Last year this performing arts program brought dance, theater and music to 35,000 children in the Sacramento region. Donaldson says Mondavi Center enhances K-12 education through school outreach programs that include master classes taught by world-class performers, matinee performances, teachers' guides on visiting artists, pre-matinee classroom talks by docents and lesson plans created for teachers, and providing curriculum guides developed in partnership with the School of Education that allows teachers to use performing arts as a way to teach across the curriculum. "By introducing excellent performing artists to students, and providing creative and imaginative ways for them to recognize how arts intersect with other classroom disciplines, we can instill at an early age a passion for the arts," she says. Contact: Joyce Donaldson, Mondavi Center, (530) 757-3478, jedonaldson@ucdavis.edu.

Media contact:

• Claudia Morain, News Service, (530) 752-9841, cmmorain@ucdavis.edu.

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