Interview with William Kariampuzha
We're joined by William Kariampuzha, ETYO alum from 2014-2018, and graduate of Bishop T. K. Gorman. William talks about what got him involved in music, ETYO, his path to Texas Tech, and his current endeavors with the STEM & Leaf Corps. You can find out more about the STEM & Leaf Corps at https://www.stemleafcorps.com.
Transcript
Felix Torres: [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, my name is Felix Torres. I'm the Artistic and Executive Director for the East Texas Youth Orchestra. For those of you who aren't familiar with the organization, we've got two full orchestras, one string orchestra, and we also have our Jazz Academy, which was started just a few years ago, but I wanted to take some time and introduce you to some alumni, some important people in the area: teachers, lesson teachers anybody who's a supporter of the arts in the area, and hopefully this will be an ongoing series that we'll be able to share with you to bring some light to what we're doing out in East Texas, as far as the arts go. Today I wanted to introduce William Kariampuzha , who is alum of the East Texas Youth Orchestra, so welcome to the show, William.
[00:00:45]William Kariampuzha: [00:00:45] Thank you for having me, Mr. Torres.
[00:00:47] Felix Torres: [00:00:47] Absolutely. So what I'd like to start for everybody watching at home is, how did you get your start in music?
[00:00:54] And then we can go straight into, how did you get involved with ETYO and how long you were a part of the organization?
[00:01:00] William Kariampuzha: [00:01:00] Yeah I, I guess I don't really come from a very musical family, whenever I was in middle school, we all had to choose a fine arts and I just wanted to do the coolest thing possible.
[00:01:10]And what every, 13 year old boy or 12 year old boy thinks is the saxophone. So I decided to try out for the saxophone and Mr. Howard Galletly at Bishop Gorman Catholic School. He trained me up until I was fortunate to start lessons with Dr. Sarah Roberts who's currently a professor in ETYO and at UT Tyler.
[00:01:31]Then she was actually at TJC, but I continued on and the more I practice, the more I fell in love with it. And I think that was one of the beauties of my music education. And as I got better and better. I finally was told about the East Texas youth orchestra in the spring of 2014 as a eighth grader.
[00:01:52] And then I tried out and started, and I think one of those first days was definitely my favorite time in ETYO. Granted the entire experience from 2014 to 2018 was fantastic, but I think that just the shock of going from like a small 20, 30 piece band to a full orchestra , playing Alto sax, and being one of the few representatives of a hybrid brass and wind instrument was really a special moment for me.
[00:02:19] And I think some of my favorite pieces that, that we played were the Firebird suite. The empire strikes back. I love playing Jupiter by Holst that was more recent, I think, 2017, 2018 and also Jian Sword Dance. Harper Bizono and I got to do a little solo for Jian Sword Dance and I just really cherish those moments playing those songs in need ETYO, and also the camaraderie of everyone I met so many have been fantastic and phenomenal players and phenomenal people in in ETYO.
[00:02:52]And I think that was, he just Ety was just a phenomenal experience for me. And I'm so grateful that I had that experience. And so moving forward that's set me up for where I wanted to go in the future and with music.
[00:03:08]Felix Torres: [00:03:08] Before we get to, your next steps after high school, you mentioned two things.
[00:03:12] One is the camaraderie, and I always talk about this with our kids now is, you have the unique pleasure and experience of getting to know students from all over the area. Now, when we talk about the Fort worth youth orchestra or greater Dallas, Houston, it's a small pocket, or at least area, cause it's more dense, but for ETYO we have students now that drive all the way from Nacogdoches, Lufkin, over to Longview and Pine Tree, and Marshall getting closer to Louisiana.
[00:03:41] And then we have a student who just joined us this semester from DeKalb. We're talking huge swaths of East Texas that get to come together and join each other. But then the other thing you mentioned was the instrument that you play and people watching may or may not know, if you're an orchestra person you'll know for sure, but if you're not, or if you're in the music a little bit, or just like to observe that William plays the saxophone, which traditionally, unfortunately, isn't really included in too many aspects of orchestra. So why don't you talk a little bit about, what that experience was like coming in as a saxophonist and what the challenges were there.
[00:04:19] William Kariampuzha: [00:04:19] Yeah, I think being, being a saxophonist in the East Texas Youth Orchestra definitely had a lot of challenges that I think grew me as a player.
[00:04:26]I think one of the first things that we just jumped into was transposition and, transposing into horn parts in F or oboe parts in, I think B flat, and then I think we had to play some, A clarinet parts. And so there was a lot of learning that I had to do very quickly to, stay afloat in ETYO, but also I was given them the opportunity to do a couple of pieces with saxophone that were written with specific saxophone parts and I think one was Bizet. That was a amazing experience to be able to play like saxophone specific parts and represent that underrepresented instrument in the orchestra.
[00:05:04]Also, I think as I move forward a little more into like junior and senior year, I got to learn not just transposition and the cognitive side about it, but really understanding another instruments place and another instruments intonation. And so I really got the opportunity to learn how to play my saxophone like a trumpet sounds, or like a French horn and really fit in to the timbre and really understand the dynamics of all those.
[00:05:30]It was so much learning, and I think that's what I really liked about it. It was dynamic every day. I never knew what kind of part I was going to get next. I never knew if I was going to be playing a bassoon or, even switching mid concert from the tenor sax, bassoon parts back to Alto sax for maybe some clarinet parts.
[00:05:48] So it was very dynamic , very energetic, and I really enjoyed it.
[00:05:53] Felix Torres: [00:05:53] Yeah, I've heard some stories from, because music kind of runs in your family, if you will, your sister is part of ETYO, and I've heard some stories about just, "Oh yeah, yeah. He was great at transposition and just throw a part in front of him and he would just figure it out on the fly."
[00:06:05] So kudos to you for taking that on. We have a saxophonist now who played Pictures at an Exhibition, so there's one specific movement in there that has a lot of Alto sax, and then gave him some parts to transpose and work on that to help us out in some of the double reed stuff.
[00:06:19] So anyway, let's move on. So you graduate high school, and you grew up in Tyler, and went to high school in Tyler, which is in East Texas, and you graduate and you're headed where?
[00:06:30]William Kariampuzha: [00:06:30] I'm headed to West Texas actually. I was fortunate to be accepted to the undergraduate-to-medical school initiative program at Texas tech University, where I'm guaranteed acceptance into medical school.
[00:06:39]And also was fortunate to be sponsored by National Merit Scholarship. And I'm thankful that's a a full ride. And it's been a great opportunity at Texas Tech. I've really enjoyed all the opportunities there, and everything there with regard to extracurriculars and academics, and also just the community in Lubbock.
[00:06:58]I didn't actually get to fit in my schedule, some band or formal instrument play, but I was able to join the church choir. And that, that was a amazing experience. I think it was, it took that dynamic all the dynamic stuff that I learned in ETYO and had applied it in a completely new setting because sometimes if I was lucky they would give me the key it was in or would, they would me chord changes.
[00:07:22]So it was very much playing completely by ear. I learned so much from the pianist. He was a jazz pianist and played in a band for so many years. And he blows my mind every time I play in and I've been playing there for like for two or three years. And that was an amazing learning opportunity as well.
[00:07:41] And I think all the lessons that I learned from ETYO helped me to jump into that new setting with not a lot of structure and also joined a couple of other local groups, but also it really helped me build a community at Texas Tech, because I think just playing an instrument is amazing.
[00:07:58] It's an amazing way to meet other people. And just to share stories and share in a group experience that's really hard to get in any other setting. So I'm very grateful for the things that ETYO has done and for where it's taken me.
[00:08:11] Felix Torres: [00:08:11] That's great to hear. We talk all the time about how students may not go on to be a professional musician, or they may not go on to be a teacher. They may want to go into engineering, or medical school, or be a lawyer. You're a testament yourself, too. "Yeah, I didn't get a chance to enroll in any classes", but you still found an outlet for performance and for comraderie, so that's great to hear.
[00:08:32] Let's talk about how this all came to be. You sent me an email a couple of days ago about something that you're involved in and you wanted to share it with our musicians, and we're going to send out the links to everyone and I'll put it in the description and wherever this going to be posted, I'll share all of those as the deadlines coming up. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that.
[00:08:49] William Kariampuzha: [00:08:49] Yes, so at Texas Tech, I've been fortunate to get involved with student organizations and helped incorporate a service student organization called the STEM & Leaf Corps. We provide educational outreach and opportunities for K-12 students.
[00:09:04]I have been with that organization for the past two years and I've helped grow it and moved up from just being a tutor to now I'm Co-President of the organization. And last year as treasurer, I incorporated it as a 501c3 non-profit. And we also reshaped the organization as a platform for service.
[00:09:24]What that means is we've taken a lot of what we've done in the past and just innovated on it. One of the new opportunities that we have created is the special topics program. So I actually started this program a whole year ago when I was working on a mathematical linguistics problem. And it was a research problem and I wanted some help with doing data collection and working out some of the kinks of the problem.
[00:09:47]And as a primary investigator I decided to enlist a couple of high school students. That program grew to, last semester, being two programs: computational biology and computational linguistics. And this semester, we are very fortunate to have expanded it greatly. We are now offering , 11 topics ranging from Ancient Greek philosophy to Biotechnology, to investing.
[00:10:13]Specifically I reached out to ETYO because one of our programs is music and memory. So this is a fantastic opportunity for students to engage in music discussions and really understand how music affects the human physiology, the human psychology, and also just the human person.
[00:10:30]That's specifically why I reached out to ETYO and I think this is a fantastic opportunity. I know I would have loved to participate in some of these when I was in ETYO whenever I was at high school . It's open to anybody and it's one hour per week and it's completely virtual and completely free.
[00:10:47]Students can apply. And I believe we are extending the deadline about one day, but the current deadline is Friday, January 22nd, 2021 at midnight.
[00:10:57]Felix Torres: [00:10:57] All of this stuff has been incredibly fascinating and I wish we had more time to get into all the different programs that you have, but specifically about the music and memory program, give us the sixty-second bare bones, cursory overview of the music and memory program.
[00:11:12] William Kariampuzha: [00:11:12] Yeah. So we're really excited about the music and memory program because students will get to really take a look at how music affects perception and cognition and memory. And then really delve into what makes the piece memorable.
[00:11:27]So like Beethoven's Fifth - a lot more popular than say Dvorak's New World symphony. Or why is it more memorable? Students can also take a look at other potential uses for music like in education or in therapy specifically.
[00:11:41] I've had the opportunity to go to nursing homes and do music therapy for them and play concerts for nursing home patients and this is just one of the amazing ways that music can change people's lives and make the world a better place. So students will get the opportunity to discuss all these factors, all the actions between music and memory. But also if students really want to be proactive, there's an opportunity to do experimentation and do research and you get some cutting edge breakthroughs, or learn something new and contribute to the knowledge between music and memory. I think it's going to be a fantastic interdisciplinary program.
[00:12:19]I really enjoy these programs because it's not really often that you get the opportunity to engage in some of these discussions until college. That's what we're we really want to do.
[00:12:29]Felix Torres: [00:12:29] It's so interesting that you mentioned interdisciplinary. That's not something that maybe a lot of high school students may experience. But when you talk about, how music impacts the brain and/or how hearing something can have a physical effect on you, whether it be, neurochemical, or any of these other elements, it goes beyond just the physical part. There's just so many interesting things that have to do with it.
[00:12:57]Thank you so much, William, for coming and talking with us about not only your time in ETYO, but the things that you're dealing with in the STEM & Leaf Corps program. We will put all of those links in the description, so that you can find out more information.
[00:13:12] And as he mentioned earlier, it is a 501c3 program, so I would imagine that there are some places that they can make donations if you'd like to support this program. Thank you, William, for being here and I appreciate it.
[00:13:23] William Kariampuzha: [00:13:23] Yes, sir. Thank you so much, Mr. Torres, for everything you've done and everything you will do in the future. I know ETYO is going great places with you, and thank you so much for having me.
[00:13:33]Felix Torres: [00:13:33] Absolutely. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
