Music surrounds us. It is arguably the most effective conduit for the expression of emotions and ideas. In fact, it is so effective that we don’t even need words! Yet, we are so accustomed to listening to music that we often take it for granted.

I would like to propose that you join me on a short journey as we stop and smell the roses and contemplate the enriching benefits that violin lessons can bring to you or your child. You may reasonably ask: “Why specifically violin?” You may substitute the word “violin” for “voice, cello, or even kazzoo” if this makes you happy. As a professional violinist in Boston, however, I choose to speak about what I know best!

If I had to distill my personal reasons for pursuing my career as a musician into one word, it would be “Love”. In fact, I will go as far to say that this is the most important driving force behind doing anything worthwhile in this world. It doesn’t matter if you are a musician, doctor, or particle physicist. If you love to do something, the rest of your life will unfold like a flower.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “I was expecting a treatise on the benefits of music in education, brain development of babies, or, at the very least, an article about the sense of discipline that music can teach our children”! While I believe all of these elements to be important consequences of music lessons, they are just that: consequences. Furthermore, as a teacher, I do not know if my violin lessons will have the same impact on every student. This is a beautiful thing. After all, when we learn how to write, some of us use our education to produce novels, others create scientific articles, and others solve complex mathematical formulas. Some do all! Of course, if there is a particular need that I can fill through my lessons, such as a desire to bring structure into the life of a child, I am happy to comply.

The bottom line is that if a student, whether child or adult, shows an aptitude and desire to learn how to play the violin, the rest will follow. Yet, a partnership is needed between teacher and parent so that a student does not give in to the human impulse to give-up when things get harder (violin is not an easy instrument).

Let’s examine what I mean by the word “Love”, as stated above. The giver of love does so through an expression of support that allows the receiver to develop and grow without pressure. It is a sad testament to our society that many do not know what real love is.

I am very lucky. In my formative years, music was always taught to me through love. It was never forced and I was never pressured to be the best violinist in the world. As a result, I was able to figure out things for myself with the guidance of supportive teachers and parents. Because I didn’t feel the need to conform to the standards of others, I was able to find my own unique personal expression. In fact, the journey of personal expression continues to this day and changes in accordance to my surroundings. At heart, we musicians are communicators. As a teacher, my role is to give my students the technical tools to musically communicate. Of course, I have the obligation to teach the traditions of our musical forefathers, but when the student ultimately reaches a certain aptitude for the instrument and the appropriate historical style of the performance, the rest is up to him or her!

Sounds complex? Even a beginning 4 year old can transcend basic music through self expression. They don’t even have to try! Ever hear kids sing a playground song over and over (and over) again? What they are really doing is emoting through the music. As they “work it out”, they are perfecting their own expression in a unique way. Children are already creative by nature.

Applied to violin, once a child knows how to hold the violin and the bow, he or she can make up songs. Adult beginners can also find again what is all-too-often a long-lost creative impulse that we were all born with. In fact, practicing the violin is a wonderful outlet for this, and on an elemental level, is equivalent to singing in the shower. The beauty of this is that the journey never stops. What would you like to do with YOUR music? read more

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Latest News Teen Violin Star is Venezuela’s Youngest Conductor

At 2 years old, he was given his first musical instrument: a “cuatro,” or small four-string guitar. At 8, he cried with emotion at a brass band concert.

Now, at just 14, Jose Angel Salazar is Venezuela’s youngest orchestra conductor – the latest prodigy from his nation’s famed El Sistema (The System) music development program – and possibly the youngest in the world.

Since the mid-1970s El Sistema has taught hundreds of thousands of youths, many from impoverished homes in Venezuela’s tough slums, to play in orchestras. Supporters say it gives them discipline, cuts truancy and boosts self-esteem.

“For a boy of 14 to be conducting an orchestra at the same time as going to school is a miracle that only happens in Venezuela,” Salazar told Reuters in an interview last week on Margarita, the Caribbean island where he was born.

The teenager, who delights in the complex symphonies of Franz Schubert and overtures by Antonio Vivaldi, is the second of three siblings raised by two local schoolteachers.

At a concert that night, the other musicians applauded him warmly as he took the stage to conduct 40 other youngsters, many of them older than him. Smiling shyly, he raised his baton and silence fell before the first notes rang out.

After two pieces, he received a long standing ovation, with his proud family looking on from a private box.

Jose Antonio Abreu, a local pianist, politician and economics professor, founded El Sistema in 1975 to get poor youngsters off the street, especially in shantytown “barrios” with some of the highest murder rates in the world, by offering them a classical musical education focused on ensemble playing.

Today, it is made up of 180 orchestras and about 350,000 youths, some 2,000 of whom recently flooded the Caracas metro to play in a simultaneous concerts at 23 stations.

Its most well-known alumnus is 31-year-old Gustavo Dudamel, who is now director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and shot to rock-star levels of fame after leading Venezuela’s Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra at rapturously received concerts worldwide.

Another prodigy is Edicson Ruiz, who at 17 became the youngest musician to join the Berlin Philharmonic.

Youth orchestras inspired by Abreu’s methods are being set up in places including Los Angeles, Scotland and Spain.

GLOBAL AMBITION

Salazar, who spoke to Reuters between rehearsals while wearing his high school uniform – a pale blue polo shirt, says he too hopes to travel the world one day, thanks to music.

In preparation, he said he plans to study languages after he leaves school in two years’ time. And, as a fan of Schubert, he says he will start with German.

His love of Schubert, and classical music in general, began when he was age 8 and he saw a concert in Margarita by a local brass band with a trumpet player from the Berlin Philharmonic.

“I wanted to play the trumpet. … I remember crying three times because of the impression the music made on me,” he said.

He soon gave up karate lessons in favor of his new passion.

He began by learning the recorder, which all initiates to El Sistema are taught, and then the violin. He excelled at that instrument and was soon named as a concertmaster – or the leader of the first violin section of the orchestra.

Salazar, who also plays the guitar and the “cuatro,” said the first time he directed the orchestra it was spontaneous.

“I was playing (the violin) and there was a teachers’ meeting so our teacher had to leave. Since no one was left in charge, I put down the violin and began to conduct,” he said with a smile.

Before long, Salazar was conducting boys twice his age, but always under the watchful eye of his teacher, Felipe Izcaray.

His life has changed a lot. After school he runs, without changing his uniform, to rehearse late into the night. It is only during the weekends when there are no concerts that he has something resembling a normal teenage life with his friends.

One day, he dreams of conducting at New York’s storied Carnegie Hall, or the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow.

“I want to continue developing myself so that in the future I can pass on the gifts that I’m receiving now,” Salazar said….More at Teen Violin Star is Venezuela’s Youngest Conductor – Latinos Post

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