Houston: Beyoncé at Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts

The building at 790 Austin Street in Downtown Houston houses one of the finest performing arts high schools in America. And Beyoncé Knowles walked through its doors to be shaped by it.

The Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts — known as Kinder HSPVA — is part of the Houston Independent School District. It divides its curriculum into six departments: instrumental music, vocal music, dance, theater, visual arts, and creative writing. Beyoncé enrolled in the vocal music program. She was already extraordinary. HSPVA was where she became disciplined.

Children at Risk ranked HSPVA the top school in greater Houston in 2009. But the school’s reputation was already established long before. It attracted the most serious young musicians in the city — students who had demonstrated unusual gifts and were ready to be trained to use them fully.

The School That Trained the Voice

Beyoncé’s technical precision is not an accident of talent. It is the product of work. HSPVA provided the framework — the breathing exercises, the vocal training, the stagecraft — that a naturally gifted singer needs to become a complete performer. You can hear the training in her live performances. Every breath is placed. Every note lands exactly where it’s supposed to.

She later attended Alief Elsik High School in southwest Houston, where she and Kelly Rowland were classmates. But HSPVA is where the professional foundation was laid. It sits a short drive from the Third Ward where she grew up — a direct line from the church choir to the performing arts campus to the stages of the world.

The building still stands. Inside it, another class of Houston musicians is working toward something. The lineage continues.