Smiles were all around, then, when Sandra Chafouleas, not just the family\u2019s neighbor but also a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor in UConn\u2019s Neag School of Education<\/a>, approached them with the idea for a musical collaboration \u2013 write and record the theme song for the Feel Your Best Self<\/a> program she co-created and indirectly help young children channel their feelings, similar to the way young Ethan had learned to express himself.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a melody I had tucked away, and I brought it back,\u201d Ethan says of the song that took him less than 10 minutes to write. \u201cI started from the beginning and filled in the words that they really wanted, because they had a highlighted list of words they were adamant I use. From there, the song developed naturally.\u201d<\/p>\n Louis says that while Chafouleas approached the family about working on the song together, he and Amanda agreed the project was better suited for Ethan, who\u2019s taken professional music lessons on the cello, French horn, guitar, and voice and during the pandemic added online lessons in song composition.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not as intricate as my other pieces,\u201d Ethan admits of the Feel Your Best Self theme<\/a> that spans 1 minute, 14 seconds and is probably the shortest he\u2019s written. The longest is about 5 minutes.<\/p>\n Chafouleas says she and co-creator Emily Wicks, manager of operations and collections at the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry<\/a>, were focused on writing the scripts for 13 episodes of the puppet-centric program and hadn\u2019t initially considered their musical options.<\/p>\n \u201cBut as we got closer to the shoot dates, we started talking about inserting music in the beginning and at the end, and at first thought we would use canned music,\u201d she says. \u201cBut as we talked, Emily and I didn\u2019t think that was quite right. It seemed that we should have music that was specifically connected to Feel Your Best Self.\u201d<\/p>\n The two talked about words and ideas that matched the goal of the video series \u2013 like \u201ctake a break,\u201d \u201cget some rest,\u201d and \u201cit\u2019s easy\u201d \u2013 and approached the Hanzlik family, knowing the song would need to be a quick turnaround as filming dates neared.<\/p>\n \u201cGiven the project already represented a collaboration between the School of Fine Arts<\/a> and the Neag School, it seemed natural to extend collaboration from Puppet Arts<\/a> to the music department,\u201d Chafouleas says.<\/p>\n \u201cThat has been one of my favorite parts of this work,\u201d Wicks says. \u201cA strength of this project has been it developing from an interdisciplinary collaboration at the University. Being able to create partnerships between education, puppetry, music, and even technology<\/a> has helped to make this project a success.\u201d<\/p>\n Ethan produced the song in his home recording studio adding in a xylophone and marimba electronically. Then came filming it with a trio of puppets.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were all crouching below me,\u201d Ethan says of the puppeteers. \u201cI was seated above everyone else, so there was a space below where people could crouch and slide on scooters. It was really interesting to see the process. The puppeteers are very serious about their craft and it\u2019s incredible how they maneuver and create these characters out of nowhere.\u201d<\/p>\n Amazed by the whole process, Ethan says he\u2019d gladly work on another children\u2019s project even though that genre is almost harder to create because the product needs to be accessible, and it needs to be simple.<\/p>\n \u201cIt has to be something children can understand, and not just understanding lyrics and words. They need to have an emotional understanding and emotional connection to the music. It needs to be singable. Those melodies are catchy, they get in your brain,\u201d Ethan says.<\/p>\n Chafouleas says she and Wicks have received many positive comments about the theme song: \u201cWe have heard everything from \u2018what a super cute jingle\u2019 to \u2018my co-worker walks around humming it all the time\u2019 to the tune totally gets \u2018stuck in my head, like an earworm.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n And that\u2019s good for Ethan, who expects to study music in college and pursue a career in music composition and production. Already, he\u2019s written hundreds, if not thousands, of songs, he says, at least one a day \u2013 even during study hall.<\/p>\n \u201cRecently, I had my first choral piece published and it\u2019s being premiered this March,\u201d Ethan says.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd where is it being premiered,\u201d his father prompts.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s being premiered at Carnegie Hall with the E.O. Smith Chamber Singers,\u201d Ethan says, proud but reserved. \u201cI\u2019m very excited to have the opportunity to go there not just as a singer, but as a composer and have my piece premiered there. It\u2019s being published by Hal Leonard, which is the largest sheet music publishing company in the world. That\u2019s where I\u2019m focused, vocal arranging and production.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a profession in which Louis Hanzlik says he has full confidence his son will excel, not just because he\u2019s talented but also because he\u2019s levelheaded and driven.<\/p>\n And in a lot of ways, he\u2019s an example of how to Feel Your Best Self in a human world.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Find more information and access the Feel Your Best Self materials on the website<\/a> or by subscribing to the YouTube channel<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Mansfield 17-year-old’s composition captures the dynamic of a multidisciplinary collaboration between the School of Fine Arts and the Neag School of Education<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":196235,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1711,1855,1914,2235,2198],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2368],"class_list":["post-196223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-culture","category-neag","category-sfa","category-today-homepage","category-tolland-county"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-08 17:56:57","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196223"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":196279,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196223\/revisions\/196279"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/196235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196223"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=196223"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=196223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"UConn](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/021623-LouisEthanHanzlik-1b-200x300.jpg\")