Community Music School String Quartet (1926), pt. 2

Community Music Center student orchestra (1924), source: San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection

In our scrapbook collection we have a typewritten program of 1923 performances at the San Francisco Public Library for the City of San Francisco 3rd Annual Music Week.  This event was co-sponsored by the University of California Extension Division.

The Community Music Center (then called the Community Music School Settlement) performed on the morning of November 3, 1923.  The two student conductors, Preston Hartman and Alfred Bousquet, were members of the 1926 string quartet.

An Oakland Tribune reviewer attending the convention of the California Federation of Music Clubs in 1924 took special notice of this orchestra .  He described them as

 a determined group of young fiddlers who we delighted to hear not alone for the good sort of music they offered but for the infection delight they took in offering it. Then there was one little shaver, Preston Hartman by name, who stood right out in front and led his mates with as magnificent an air as ever John Phillip Sousa could have mustered.

Preston Hartman was very active with the Community Music School.  At age 12 he had written an arrangement of the lullaby "Sleep, Baby, Sleep" for his fellow students to play.


 source: San Francisco Examiner January 3, 1926

A 1926 article tells of Jeanette Davis and Preston Hartman meeting with San Francisco Symphony conductor Alfred Hertz who gave them conducting tips. According to their yearbook, The Red and White, Preston Hartman led Lowell High School's string quartet in 1927.

 Preston Hartman - source The Red and White [yearbook], December 1927.

After graduating he went to work as a clerk at the Anglo-California National Bank, but he remained an amateur musician throughout his life.  According to his 2005 obituary he performed with the Shrine Band. A 1938 article mentioned that he was a member of the Berkeley Violin Club orchestra.  He also performed in the Marin Symphony Orchestra.  He also was a member of the orchestra for The Family, an all-male social club.

The published script of the 1946 Family Flight play of 1946 shows Preston Hartman as a member of The Everfaithful, the orchestra that accompanied the club's performances.  Here he performed alongside San Francisco Symphony musicians like Caeser Addimando, Fred A. Baker, Julius Haug, Ernest Kubitschek, Merrill L. Remington, Robert Rourke, Leslie Jerome Schivo, Rudy Seiger, Rogers F. Shoemaker, and Erich Weiler

source: San Francisco Chronicle (February 15, 2006).

Preston Hartman was born February 25, 1911 and died November 8, 2005.

Alfred Bousquet - source: The Mission [yearbook] Fall 1927

Alfred Bousquet was a musical standout at Mission High School.  He played in the all-state orchestra.  He also represented his school in the National Orchestra at the Superintendent's Conference in Dallas, Texas in February 1927. According to the 1940 census he completed 3 years of college.  He then worked as a teller at Bank of America.  Alfred Bousquet was born March 4, 1911 and died January 19, 1981.

The fourth member of the Community Music School String Quartet, Emmet Peterson, went on to attend and graduate from St. Mary's College in 1931.  In 1940 he became a civil law clerk for the Municipal Court.

Peterson remained active with the Community Music School / Center throughout his life.  According to a 1968 memorial article in the Minute Book, a publication of the Association of Municipal Court Clerks of California, he was active with the school for 50 years.  He later joined the school's board and served as treasurer.  During the 1950s he was involved with the arrangements committee for the school's rummage sales.

source: San Francisco Chronicle (February 22, 1959)

He also performed at the Community Music Center.  On February 27, 1959 he took part in a chamber music concert of baroque and modern music.

His obituary in the April 17, 1965 Chronicle described him as "one of the most admired and beloved figures in City Hall."  The Community Music Center honored him by presenting a black pine tree to the Strybing Arboretum with a plaque in Peterson's honor.  Emmet J. Peterson was born December 18, 1911 and died April 15, 1965.

source: San Francisco Chronicle (April 28, 1966)

None of the members of the Community Music School's String Quartet of 1926 went on to achieve fame as musicians.  But they all assumed role as hidden musical citizens within the wider musical life of San Francisco.


"Berkeley Violin club to give annual concert," Berkeley Daily Gazette (March 23, 1938).

"Children to give concert today," San Francisco Chronicle (June 1, 1923).

Danforth, Roy Harrison, "New themes fill delegates time, "Oakland Tribune April 30, 1924.

"Emmet Peterson," San Francisco Chronicle (April 17, 1965).

The Mission (Associated Students of the Mission High School, Spring; Fall 1927).

"Music school plans annual rummage sale," San Francisco Chronicle (April 4, 1952).

"New relief from 'atticolitis'," San Francisco Chronicle (January 29, 1956).

"Ninety will be graduated from St. Mary's College," San Francisco Chronicle (May 19, 1931).

"Out of the past, ten years ago today," San Rafael Daily Independent Journal (January 24, 1951).

"Pine tree to be presented to Arboretum," San Francisco Chronicle (April 28, 1926).

"Preston Hartman," San Francisco Chronicle (February 15, 2006).

So We Built a Church for "Steve"; Being the story of the building of the Chapel of Our Lady of the Wayside / the book by Richard Prosser; the music by Charles Runyan; general direction of Vincent E. Duffey. Based on a paper read at the Flight of 1943 by Harald Pracht; presented by the players and musicians of the Family, in the Valley of Portola on Sunday evening, September 1, 1946. The flight play for 1946 (The Family, 1947).

The Red and White (Lowell High School Students Association, December 1927).

"Rummage sale set for April 1 and 2," San Francisco Chronicle (January 30, 1953).

San Francisco Programs. Music (San Francisco Public Library, 1923).

"Two civil service posts awarded," San Francisco Chronicle (February 29, 1940).

Community Music School String Quartet (1926)

Community Music Center string quartet 1926. In the courtyard of CMC. Left to right, Jeanette, Alfred, Preston, Emmet. (source: San Francisco Historic Photograph Collection)

The 1926 might have marked a high point in the early life of the San Francisco Community Music Center (then called the Community Music School). One of their notable successes was their string quartet.  The San Francisco Examiner's esteemed music critic Redfern Mason wrote an May 16, 1926 article that brings to life this photograph from the Library's Historical Photograph Collection.

On Saturday afternoon of Music Week I heard four young people--children, most of them--play a Mozart string quartet.  A week earlier I had listened to them at Santa Monica, when they played for the California Federation of Musical Clubs. They were Jeanette Davis, Preston Hartman, Alfred Bousquet and Emmet Peterson, and they played with such aplomb and put so much joy and beauty into their work that it was a privilege to be there to hear them.

It was no parading of geniuses; there was not a Wunderkind among them. What we saw and heard was much more encouraging to ordinary mortality than that. We sat in our places and, one after the other, little lads and lasses came and played the piano and fiddle--played with manifest pleasure, as if something had come into their lives which lent the moments gladness and took the dullness out of the daily round.

Mason gives names to the members of the string quartet - Jeanette Davis playing first violin, Alfred Bousquet playing second violin, Preston Hartman playing viola, and Emmet Peterson playing 'cello.

The youngest person in the photograph was Jeanette B. Davis.

source: The Violinist (May 1918)

According to earlier newspaper coverage, Jeanette Davis began playing violin at age 5. After studying for only 5 months she was featured at a concert of the Greater San Francisco Conservatory of Music directed by Sigmund Anker. (Anker was Yehudi Menuhin's first teacher). At age 6 she performed at 1920 concert fundraiser for a Jewish temple to be built in the Western Addition. Later that year she performed at a Christmas program at the YMCA on Golden Gate Avenue.

source: San Francisco Examiner (February 6, 1924)

She was featured in a 1924 article in the San Francisco Examiner where she described meeting and playing for virtuoso violinist Jascha Heifetz who told her that she would be "one of the great ones."  The article noted that she was the first violinist in her orchestra at John Swett Junior High School.  She also told the reporter that in addition to playing violin she liked raw carrots and outdoor sports.

She later graduated from Galileo High School in 1931.


Source: The Telescope, Galileo High School (Spring 1931).

That same year she was feted by the San Francisco Symphony for an essay she wrote about music for the San Francisco Young People's Symphony.

Jeanette Davis is pictured at the far right. source: San Francisco Chronicle (January 31, 1931).

Little is known of Jeanette Davis's later music making.  The 1924 article tells us that her mother was Emma Davis.  A search in the Ancestry database revealed that her maiden name was Emma O. Hedberg. The 1930 census shows her working as a hairdresser and living in Daly City with Jeanette.  During the mid-1930s she had a hair-dressing salon in the Outer Richmond.  The same City Directory shows Jeanette living with her and working as a stenographer.  By 1940, a sexagenarian Emma Davis was working as a housekeeper on Nob Hill with Jeanette living nearby.  Mother and daughter lived together or as neighbors through the end of the 1950s.

Ancestry.com provides the following information about Jeanette Betty Davis recorded by the Social Security Administration:

Birth Date:	25 Jan 1915
Birth Place:	San Francisco [San Francisco, California]
Death Date:	23 Apr 2004
Father:	Joseph Davis
Mother:	Emma O Hedberg

The birth year provided is probably not be accurate (The 1930 Census listed her as 16 years old).  If it is, then Jeanette was three and half years old at her concert debut.  The Social Security Administration gave her name variously as Jean and Jeanette.  In 1965 she was listed as Jeanette Betty Vanoss, in 1982 she was listed as Jeanette Betty Kabakoff and at her death in 2004 her name was recorded as Jeanette B. Van Oss.

After 1931, Jeanette Davis largely disappeared from visible concert life.  There is only an announcement for a November 25, 1941 concert of the Chamber Orchestra of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. At this program Marcia Van Dyke (a future member of the San Francisco Symphony and a minor Hollywood star) and a Jeanette Davis played the solo parts the Bach Concerto for Two Violins.

Yet she must have kept up her violin playing.  In the 1948-1949 Polk's Crocker-Langley San Francisco City Directory has an entry for Jeanette Davis and shows her working as a musician.  In the 1961 and 1962 directories her profession is recorded as "music teacher."  Around the time her last name changed to Van Oss in 1965 her name stopped appearing in the San Francisco directories.

Jeanette B. Davis never lived up to Jascha Heifitz's prediction. It seems that she had a rather difficult life and lived much of her life close to her widowed mother.  But there is evidence that although she did not achieve a name for herself in music, music remained a part of her life and that she profited from it at times.  And hopefully music was a "manifest pleasure" for her as it was when she was a young musician.

In the next entry we will see what became of the other Community Music School String Quartet members.


"Anker String Orchestra Concert," Pacific Coast Musical Review vol. 34, no. 1 (April 6, 1918), 4.

"Community Chest Music Work: Music Talk to Chest Kiddies," San Francisco Chronicle (January 3, 1926).

Ennis, Helen Lewis, "Great Future Expected for 11-Year Old Local Violinist," San Francisco Examiner (February 6, 1924).

"Essay Prize Winners Take Bow at Final Concert by Symphony," San Francisco Chronicle (January 31, 1931).

Mason, Redfern, "The Community Music School Brings Beauty Into Young Life and Helps the Old," San Francisco Examiner May 16, 1926.

"Plans for Jewish Temple To Be Built Here," San Francisco Chronicle (March 18, 1920).

The Telescope (Galileo High School, Spring 1931).

"Thanksgiving Concert To Be Given In San Francisco," Berkeley Daily Gazette (November 19, 1941).