“I guess you could say we’re the other musical Judd family,” quips Judd in an e-mail, a few days after our interview in her pleasantly cluttered office in the Music Building. Given the combination of her professional commitment to teaching and her personal interest in live musical performance, it was only natural that Judd would strive to widen the scope of the College House Music Program so that it included not only individual lessons but also extensive ensemble coaching, masterclasses, performances, and outreach concerts at the Penn Alexander School in West Philadelphia. In her position as associate chair for performance, Judd has brought in a diverse roster of eight College House Music Fellows, professional musicians from the Philadelphia area who come regularly to teach, coach, and perform in residences all over campus.

In addition, the College House Music Fellows and their student ensembles participate in a series of high-caliber, informal recitals in the houses. “These are short concerts, under an hour, in a comfortable setting,” says Judd. “We’ve learned from experience that the best hour to schedule a recital is 9 p.m.—study-break time—and that it helps attract an audience if we serve good food. Of course, while we’re facilitating performance opportunities, we’re simultaneously working to build audiences.

“This program is uniquely Penn,” she continues. “It’s the spoke-in-the wheel model. We took advantage of the University’s decentralization to create an atmosphere in which students can experience music and music-making in many different environments, including their own residences. As the college houses are renovated, they are putting in practice rooms to accommodate all of this new student demand. We’ve moved Steinways and Yamahas, six- and seven-foot pianos, to rooftop student lounges in the high rises. The instruments are on long-term loan by the department in exchange for the cost of routine tuning and maintenance. The department takes care of arranging the instrument care, and the college house pays for it. We’ve moved in drum sets, amps, and an electric bass.

“And we’ve built a wish-list: a harpsichord, an Indonesian gamelan, more drum sets, more pianos. Right now we have eight fellows, but our goal is to have 10. We have over a hundred students participating in the program this year, but our goal is to serve 250. We’d love an endowment to support small ensembles, including chamber music, world music, and jazz. We’d like to offer a full subsidy to some students who can’t afford lessons. And we’d love to bring back an ensemble in residence.”

The performance chair is only three years old, and when questioned Judd acknowledges that the new position came without any increase in departmental resources. “We’re doing all of this with the same size staff as three years ago. We do it on a wing and a prayer.”

Judd has been known to personally hand-carry music stands across campus, when necessary, and to march into President Amy Gutmann’s office with a boombox on her shoulder. When the department didn’t have money for a drum set, Judd persuaded a neighbor who was selling her house to donate the drums in her basement. “I dragged it upstairs and got jazz drummer Lucky Thomson, who would be teaching on the set, to come to my house and look it over. With his approval, we drove the set over to Penn, where House Dean Jane Rogers and I unloaded it and hauled it into a practice room in the college house. I confess I got some strange looks from students as I hauled in a drum set and all the peripherals across the Quad.”

The boombox incident came about because Judd wanted to ensure that ensembles from the music department would be part of Gutmann’s inaugural ceremonies last October [“A Marriage Meant to Be,” November/December]. She was invited to the president’s office to discuss the selection of pieces, but when she pulled out the CD she had been asked to bring, it was discovered that none of the computers had been set up for audio playback. Judd immediately volunteered to return later in the day with a boombox. “It turned out that the boombox was quite heavy, and that on my shoulder was the only way I was going to get it all the way from the Music Building to College Hall. It was my one and only deejay gig—and for the entire inaugural committee. Not exactly what I imagined getting a Ph.D. for, but it worked. The Penn Sinfonia and the University Choir were a wonderful visual and sonic background for the inauguration, and the payback was the evident joy on Amy Gutmann’s face during their performance.”

When I mention the College House Music Program during my phone interview with Robert Kendrick, he listens with pleasure to my description of the latest developments in his alma mater’s undergraduate offerings.

“That sounds like something we here at Chicago should really try to study and learn from,” he says. “We’re an institution that historically, like Penn in the old days, has let performance happen on the margins of other student responsibilities and activities. Now we’re trying to upgrade our offerings for practical music-making opportunities. In the context of a department that has a relatively small number of music majors, we also have a lot of students who are not majors but who want to do serious music performance.”

James DePreist is equally effusive. “What’s going on now is just an explosion,” he says. “The musical life at Penn as it is today would have been a dream for me, when I was an undergraduate. I applaud everything that’s happening.”