Rosie's House

Originally published in The State Press on Thursday, February 27, 2003


"I take my flute case with me to school everyday and every time I look at it I just want to open it up and start playing," Diana Solorio gushes.


Rosie’s House founder Rosabell Schurz plays the cello while 12-year-old Myra Sandoval accompanies her on the violin.

Young musicians sit in a somewhat-straight line in a place where Phoenix's ancestors were baptized, married, and received communion. A teacher paces the floor in front of his students, retracing the steps of a sermoning priest. But, this congregation is more interested in the gospel according to Mozart.

The room in which they make their music would have been used as a chapel in the distant past. It has since been converted into a practice/performance hall. In the back of the chapel, two elementary-age boys, Ronnie Gomez and Nick Garcia, are sprawled out across a pew along with their instruments and the contents of their backpacks. They diligently practice timetables and learn vocabulary words as they wait for their cousin to finish his music lesson. What would they be doing that afternoon if they weren't at Rosie's House?

"Probably playing a video game or something," Garcia says.

This daily scene is something Rosabell Schurz, the founder and namesake of Rosie's House, a music academy in downtown Phoenix, never would have imagined growing up in World War II-era Munich. Schurz's childhood in Germany was one of bloodshed, extreme poverty and hunger.

It was an upbringing without music.

Before the war broke out, Schurz had a passion for the violin; but when she was 8 years old, the fighting escalated and she was forced to give up music when her family moved to the countryside. She was never able to take up music again.

Schurz didn't want to see that happen to other kids.

"When a war comes, everything stops dead in the tracks," says Rosie, 67, a German accent barely recognizable in her aged voice. "Some of these children have war indirectly in their own homes, and I want them to see joy and beauty in their lives.

"One way to do that is through art and music."

Dream house

For most of the day, the dusty stretch between Seventh and Eighth avenues off Pima Street in Phoenix is relatively quiet. The half-mile of asphalt is sandwiched between a Salvation Army rehabilitation center on one corner and a llanteria [tire repair shop] on the other. Van Buren Street, where the ladies of the night seem to be on the prowl all hours of the day, is only a few blocks away.

Then, around four o'clock in the afternoon, something begins to change and Pima Street becomes vibrant.

Astro vans and late-model American sedans pull up in front of a white building that was once the San Pablo Episcopalian Mission. Black words carefully painted on the outside of the building inform passersby of the current mission pursued on the inside: Rosie's House - A Music Academy For Children.

Van doors swing open and frenzied elementary-age students tumble out - their black instrument cases in hand and overloaded backpacks bouncing with each leap toward the front entrance of Rosie's House.

The kids know that along with bad grades in school, tardies and absences at Rosie's can jeopardize their enrollment in the free after-school music programs. They know that if they leave, there is a waiting list of children who would jump at the opportunity to take their place.

"It's about more than music," Schurz says. "It's about keeping kids off the streets. Music is the international language and it is able to instill pride, confidence and discipline."

Schurz began her mission seven years ago when she and her husband, Woody, bought a turn-of-the-century house in downtown Phoenix.

"You should have seen it," says Rosie, who came to Phoenix in 1978. "It was remodeled with a little garden in the front. It was beautiful"

Then called "The Christmas House," it was a home for the elderly as well as a place for children to receive music lessons. Eventually, the music program became so large that it outgrew the house and Schurz decided to move to the San Pablo Mission.

In the beginning, there were 45 children involved. Enrollment has since grown to 360. All of the children receive free music lessons and are loaned an instrument for practice at home. Although the lessons don't require any financial commitment, students must practice for 25 minutes a day, maintain good grades, and participate in Rosie's House activities.

One of the reasons Schurz says she has been so passionate about the program is what she describes as the continuing depletion of funding for music programs in public schools. "They have been cutting the culture out of schools and it's so frustrating," she says. "Cutting out arts in school is absolutely disgusting. Not everything in life revolves around football and basketball."

The children who take lessons at Rosie's House attend schools where music has become less of a priority, and since they come from families who can't afford quality lessons, which run upward of $35 an hour, Rosie's House is likely the only chance they have to receive any type of musical education.

"We try to be more than just plain old teachers," Schurz says. "Some kids come from dismal family conditions and when they come here it gives them something to look forward to."

Music therapy

In order to have top-notch instruction, Rosie's House uses its grant money and donations to pay the teachers for their services. "It's a miracle that Rosie's House is still alive," Schurz says. "We've had so many financial obstacles because everything relies on donation. I wouldn't have the courage to do this again. I went into this thing cold-blooded and blind." But, so far, Schurz has been able to make things work and says that she wouldn't change the way things are now for anything. "I'm extremely proud of what we've accomplished," she says. "And it is my dream to leave this legacy to the city."

Recently, Schurz has taken a sabbatical from running Rosie's House and has turned the day-to-day operation over to executive director Allison Blanchard and artistic director Joe Costello, who knows everything about the program and acts as a tour guide for first-time visitors.

Costello, who has spent most of his life involved with music programs, including ASU's guitar preparatory program, says that since part of the kids' involvement includes discipline, there have never been any problems with kids getting out of line.

"We have all kinds of rules and we've never had a fight and never had a kid come in here on drugs," he says. "Kids always rise to your standards."

Another room in the old mission serves as a banquet hall on special occasions. A sign on the wall features Uncle Sam with his famous pointing finger, "I want YOU to practice your instrument," it says. The message of the sign is redundant for 16-year-old Diana Solorio who is in the room getting a flute lesson from her teacher, Judy Conrad, a former member of the Phoenix Symphony.

Solorio says that she can hardly get through a day of high school without thinking about playing her instrument.

"I take my flute case with me to school everyday, and every time I look at it I just want to open it up and start playing," she gushes. "When I play, it relaxes me and I feel calmed."

Solorio has made it through what Costello considers to be a very telling stage in the life of a musician.

"A lot of kids will take lessons until they are about 14 or 15 and their social lives get so full that they commit to something else," he says. "That's why we try to give good instruction and show them there's value in it early so they stick with it at that critical point.

"I find that, with girls especially, if they play an instrument it gives them something to occupy their mind and they're less boy-crazy," he says. "It's harder for them to fall into that social gregariousness."

Next to the main building is another that was used as living quarters when the mission was in operation. It now serves a multitude of purposes. Instruments are housed and repaired there; private lessons are given in two separate rooms; and family members use the living room as a waiting area. There are children's books scattered across a coffee table in the center of the living room, and 20-year-old Tiffany Cooper passes her time perusing these books while she waits for her little brother, 12-year-old Larry, to finish his piano lesson. Cooper says she doesn't mind waiting because she has seen positive changes in her brother since he took up the piano.

"To be honest with you," she says, "he was pretty rowdy before he started. Now he's calmer and has a lot more patience."

Cooper may not realize it, but her involvement in Larry's musical endeavors may be just as important as his practicing scales. Costello says that family involvement is one of the crucial elements in a child's success with music.

"We're looking for a combination of [dedicated] kids and parents," he says. "If you look at all of the great musicians like Beethoven and Mozart, they all had supportive families."

Vanessa Aragon has that winning combination. She spent six years of her adolescent life learning the piano within the walls of Rosie's House. She is now studying music education at ASU's College of Music. As one of five high school graduates to go on to college from the program and the only one to pursue a degree in music, she embodies the spirit of Rosie's House. Like many of the other students, Aragon, who lives at home while she attends ASU, says her family has been supportive the whole time.

"My mom always took me back and forth to practice and made sure that I practiced at home," she says. "Music isn't the most lucrative career but they know it's something that I enjoy."

Much to the delight of her teachers and everyone involved with Rosie's House, Aragon says that she's thinking of returning to Rosie's when she graduates.

"I want to give people the opportunity that was given to me," she says. "It was a lot of work, but it was worth it in the end.

"I didn't know if studying music was something that I really wanted to do. But I enjoyed it so much that I knew I wanted to teach others."

Aragon already has gained some experience being a role model for the younger generation of Rosie's House students. "When they have summer programs, they will ask me to come in and play for the younger kids as sort of a 'look at me now' thing," she says. "I think it's easier when the kids see me play because I'm closer to their age and it helps them relate."

If Aragon is able to follow through with her plan, she will have much to offer the new students. As someone who has been with the program almost since its inception, she is empathetic to many of the situations that future students will face.

"I'm lucky to live in a good neighborhood," she says. "But a lot of the other kids are surrounded by violence, drugs and gangs."

Rosie's return home

If there's one regret that Aragon has, it's that she didn't get started with music until she was 13 years old. She says she sees younger kids at Rosie's and imagines all of their potential.

"I wish I would have been able to start earlier," she says. "Since I started [college] it's been a lot of playing catch-up. I haven't been playing as long as a lot of the other students, but now I know that's just an excuse, and I'm understanding a lot more."


Over the past six years, Aragon has made a lot of sacrifices in order to keep her musical career on track. Two years ago, she missed her junior prom to attend a competition in Tucson, and she says that she tries to avoid "anything that would jeopardize my advancement." But, she says that all of her dedication has paid off.

Aragon is attending ASU on a full scholarship that she received as a result of her involvement with Rosie's House, and she has met people and experienced things that many of her high school peers could have only dreamed of.

Aragon had only been playing the piano for a year and a half when Schurz announced that she would hold a contest in which three winners would get to go to with her to Salzburg, Germany, for the annual Mozart Festival for two weeks. The winners would also get to perform in Mozart's home, "The Residence."

Aragon practiced Mozart's Sonata in B-flat minor all summer long and won the trip to Germany along with two flutists. She had never been anywhere further than Mexico or California and she was on her way to play the piano in Mozart's hometown. Her parents didn't believe that anyone would be crazy enough to take a group of kids to Germany, but they got her a passport and she went.

"It was one of the worst winters ever, so there was snow everywhere," Aragon says. "But it was great to experience a different culture, especially one that revolves around music."

Although Schurz had returned to Germany many times since she moved to Phoenix, the trip she made with Aragon and the other two students was a particularly moving experience.

"I showed them where I lived and everything from my old life," she recalls. "The only thing they couldn't experience was what it was like in wartime. I can still remember my violin teacher. I can vividly remember her face. I remember the studio where we practiced. None of that survived after the war."

Schurz still looks back at those two weeks as one of her greatest accomplishments with the program.

"I was tickled pink," she says. "I was so proud."