Most nights at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, the faculty sit in the hall and the students perform. Dozens of times each season, the arrangement reverses. A professor walks onstage at Duncan Recital Hall, usually with colleagues beside them, and the students take the seats.
Faculty recitals are a fixture of the Shepherd School calendar, and for two professors who arrived 25 years apart, they are the clearest expression of what drew them to Rice. Jon Kimura Parker, the Walter Kris Hubert Chair of Keyboards and professor of piano, has taught at Rice for more than 25 years. Erin Hannigan, professor of oboe, is in her second. Both describe the same thing: a place where artists at the top of their field make room for one another.
Parker’s first look at the Shepherd School came in 1999, on a campus tour with then-Dean Michael Hammond. Parker suspects the route that included listening in on a symphony orchestra rehearsal led by Larry Rachleff, professor emeritus of orchestral conducting, was planned.
“They were rehearsing Prokofiev, and I was blown away,” Parker said. “I thought, ‘I want to be a part of this.’”
He joined the faculty the following year. A first impression explains why someone arrives. It does not explain why a concert pianist with an international career stays for a quarter century.
“What keeps me here is the unbelievable atmosphere among the faculty and the students,” Parker said. “Every conversation I’ve ever had with a faculty member has been about what we can do to make sure the students come first.”
Parker has seen the entire student body turn over many times and colleagues come and go. But what he found in 1999 is what he finds now.
“There’s a feeling here that you can be better than you were a week ago or a year ago and that doesn’t have to come at anybody else’s expense,” Parker said.
Hannigan arrived in 2025 after nearly 25 years as principal oboe of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. She knew the school’s reputation well before she applied, and it has held up.
“It’s a place of incredible artistry, talent and, most of all, community,” Hannigan said.
Orchestral musicians spend their careers surrounded by colleagues but answer to a conductor. Running a studio means being the one in charge and being responsible for each student’s progress.
“It’s a big change coming from the orchestral world to academia, but it’s been much smoother than it could have been because of the welcoming community,” Hannigan said.
Her approach in the studio starts from the same place.
“It’s very important to be in a learning environment where it’s OK to make mistakes because you get better faster from making them,” Hannigan said. “I feel like I’ve been embraced by that culture from the moment I got here.”
Faculty recitals put that culture in front of an audience, and they rarely feature a single name. Hannigan has three on her calendar this semester alone, two of which are with her wind faculty colleagues.
“It’s an honor to play this music, and to work with my fellow faculty is top notch,” she said. “I couldn’t ask for more.”
Sharing the Spotlight, the school’s series Parker participates in at least once a year, moves students from the hall to the stage beside him. While he has played the repertoire for decades, some of his students are learning it for the first time, and Parker says he wants their ideas as much as they want his.
After more than a quarter century, his assessment of his time at Rice takes one sentence: “It has never even occurred to me not to be here.”
In addition to faculty recitals, Hannigan and Parker will both perform as soloists with Shepherd Orchestras Sept. 25 and Dec. 4.
The full schedule of faculty recitals is available on the Shepherd School events calendar and in the 2026-27 season brochure. Faculty recitals are free to attend and no tickets are needed. The performances are also livestreamed.