Family, friends and colleagues paid their respects and said their goodbyes July 2 to Sara Rogers, a cherished member of the Buffalo music community who was killed tragically in an auto-bicycle collision on June 17. She is remembered as someone whose musical outreach was widespread. But she especially touched the lives of many through her work in musical therapy.
Rogers was one of three people struck by a car on South Park Avenue near the Seneca Buffalo Creek Casino as they rode their bicycles. As the investigation continued, police believed the driver may have experienced a medical emergency at the time of the incident.
“Someone recently said that she's a musician who spoke the way she sang,” said Jennifer Guillow, executive director of the Community Music School of Buffalo. “She sang everything that she said, and it was such a beautiful way to put it. She really touched every life that she came into contact with.”
Rogers also served on the faculty at Villa Maria College, and worked at institutions including Our Lady of Victory Human Services, Liberty POST and Buffalo Niagara Music Therapy Services.
Much of her individual musical therapy work remains available through her YouTube channel.
At the Community Music School of Buffalo, Rogers served as a trumpet instructor, was part of the childhood education faculty, and more recently took on the role as Chair of the school’s music therapy department. Guillow says Rogers gave her voice to everyone, but her specialty was working with children.
“One time in the middle of the winter, we had a young boy, an autistic child, who was too nervous to come into the school. So she put on her winter coat and she went outside and she sang to him for 30 minutes while he soothed himself,” Guillow said. “It was just such a beautiful photograph of who Sarah was. Her work with children, all throughout Western New York, was amazing and beautiful.”
Rogers contributed original material to Feelings Rock, a local program that uses music and movement to focus on social and emotional development in very young children. Feelings Rock founder Katie Webster recalled meeting Rogers for the first time at an event where several people living with autism were in attendance.
“She had her guitar and her drums, and she was inviting them up to play the instruments, try them out. And she just had this shine in her eyes,” Webster said. “When she was connecting with the people that were present there, you could just tell that everyone who walked up to her, just loved her.”
One of Rogers’ pieces, “Mixed Feelings Goodbye,” is used regularly at Feelings Rock classes. Webster says while working with Rogers to compose the music, they would discuss the mixed emotions of the end of a class, from sadness that it was ending, to the happy optimism that they would meet again next time.
Upon learning of her friend’s death, Webster spent the following weekend listening to that song again and again, noting the new context.
“When I was listening to it I just, so many more feelings were coming up. Anger at this when it happened. Confusion, how could this happen to Sara? That kind of thing,” Webster said. “She definitely was someone who wanted people to feel all their feelings, and so I guess to honor her, I'm letting myself feel all the feelings that I'm having right now.”
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June 27, 2022 at 11:01AM
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Local artist remembered for her musical therapy and impact on students, especially children - WBFO
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