Bloom! Violinists Perform at the Ollin Farms Fall Festival

This afternoon the Bloom! Montessori Suzuki violin students had the good fortune of playing their fall solo recital pieces in the Ollin Farms Fall Festival. The occasion marked the first solo concert of the 2011-2012 school year.

Ollin Farms is a beautiful, family owned, sustainable farm located about a mile from the school. We are fortunate to participate is a Farm to School program with the farm, in which the children have the opportunity to tour the farm during the year, consume their fresh, nutrient-dense produce, use their produce in practical life activities, and learn about the animals that live on the farm (with visits from baby lambs and by incubating and raising chickens); additionally, many of our parents purchase personal CSA shares from the farm. Research has shown that the age of birth to five is a formative period in which young children develop life-long nutritional habits and attitudes about food, and we share Farmer Mark and Kena Gutteridge's passion for helping young children to develop sophisticated palates and an appreciation for a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. It is also important to teach them the importance of supporting sustainable community agriculture.

It is difficult to imagine a more enjoyable event for a three to five year old child. The farm had everything a child could ask for: fields of huge pumpkins, an assortment of delicious desserts (pumpkin bars, pumpkin cookies, etc), farm tours (in which children could feed the sheep and chickens and gather eggs), hayrack rides, wide open spaces in which to run with their friends, a wide variety of interesting plant and animal specimens, and the opportunity to perform for their favorite farmers!

Farmer Mark and Kena are something in the way of celebrities at the school. There is always a little cluster of children at the door trying to get a glimpse of Farmer Mark when he drops off the weekly CSA shares, and there is seldom a week which goes by when a delighted child doesn't tell me about seeing them at the farmer's market or at their farmstand. So, when I told the children that they had been invited to perform at the Ollin Farms Fall Festival, the children were elated.

There was a second cause for celebration. This solo recital concert marked an important rite of passage for many of our students- the one year anniversary of our Suzuki violin program and the "graduation" of many our students into the Suzuki Book One program.

One year ago, we began partnering with Erron Lacy of Longmont Suzuki Strings to begin an integrated Suzuki violin program at the school. As part of the program, children attend a weekly individual lesson at the school (with their parents), a monthly group class at the school, additional group classes with Longmont Suzuki Strings, and have the opportunity to practice their violins with Bloom! Montessori staff during the independent work times (just as Montessori children have the option of choosing among other lessons).

The Suzuki method was developed by Shinichi Suzuki, a Japanese violinist who wanted to bring beauty to the lives of the children after the devastation wrought by World War II. Like Dr. Montessori, he was amazed by the ability of young children to learn their native language and master complex linguistic systems effortlessly, but with a level of precision that cannot be duplicated later in life.

The Suzuki method shares many affinities with the Montessori method of education:

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  Both methods place a great importance upon indirect preparation. Before a Suzuki child ever tries to play a piece on the violin, they begin a consistent program of listening. Just as the child who eventually learns to speak is surrounded by the sounds of spoken language, so should be the child who will eventually learn to play be surrounded by the sounds of fine music.


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  Both methods view education as a spontaneous process in which highly trained guides create a carefully prepared environment for the young child. Like Montessori, Suzuki believed that the success of his method depended upon the power of the environment, and that this early exposure ultimately determines the nature and extent of the child's future accomplishments.


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  Both educators observed that young children have a strong desire to imitate the activity of adults. As a result,Suzuki parents instruct their child at home and provide an example which the child can imitate; children also benefit from playing in a mixed age group in which they can learn from the example of other more accomplished performers.


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  Both methods utilize brief, individual lessons to teach children to master increasingly complex tasks. Both educators recognized the importance of performing a movement analysis, and breaking a complex activity into its parts and presenting the child with no more than one significant difficulty at a time. For the beginning violinist, this consists largely in participating in a variety of coordination and rhythmic games which allow the child to master the physical skills necessary for playing the violin (holding the bow and violin with the correct stance and positioning, improving finger strength, dexterity, and fine motor coordination, and learning to operate fingers independently) without having to simultaneously concern herself with pitch, tone, rhythm, and dynamics.
  Once the child is ready to start playing, Suzuki created a brilliant technical progression in which the child moves from performing open-string exercises, to playing the first rhythms within a bounded area of the bow, to learning to cross strings cleanly, to learning to move fingers independently and place them precisely in the initial finger patterns, to performing the A major scale, to playing the pitches of the first phrases of the first variation with rests between the notes, and, ultimately, to playing the entire piece in time.


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  Both methods base their progression upon the principles of movement analysis and empirical observations of how children actually learn. He reduced complicated varieties of bowing to two basic bow techniques, he observed that children find quick movements easier to execute then small ones (and arranged the variations accordingly), and he helps children build control of the bow using a preliminary bow hold which takes into account that children naturally transition from a palmer grasp to a pincer grasp.


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  Additionally, both Montessori lessons and Suzuki activities also include clear control of errors (footprints on a rug to promote correct stance, bounded playing areas on the child's bow, finger markers on the fingerboard, markings on fingers, etc) which enable auto-education, or make it possible for the child to recognize and correct errors independently.
  During the initial formative period of instruction, which takes the better part of a year for most children, the Suzuki student is considered a "pre-twinkler." For five of the Suzuki violinists who began in our inaugural semester last year, this concert marked their passage from being "pre-twinklers" to official "Suzuki Book One" students. All of the indirect "pre-twinkler" preparation, culminates in the children's biggest accomplishment to date: the ability to perform five variations and the theme of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. This is an amazing accomplishment! By the time a young child reaches this point, she has learned a piece of music 72 bars long (from memory), lasting six or seven minutes, using three fingers, and some very complicated rhythms. Needless to say, we could not be more proud of our five official Book One Students!

After the huge mountain of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, a plateau is reached. The children will begin learning a series of pieces- French Folk Song, Lightly Row, Song of the Wind, Go Tell Aunt Rhody, etc in which she will consolidate what she has learned in Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. Each of these pieces will pose one new difficulty, but always a very small step up, so that the new piece is learned very quickly. This will be a nice change of pace after the long time it took the children to learn Twinkle and the basics of violin performance.
So, it was with great excitement that the children took to the stage and performed their fall solo pieces. We were treated to sixteen beautiful solos and duets from the Bloom! Montessori students and four other Longmont Suzuki Strings students.

Then, the crowd was treated to an inspiring performance of Somewhere Over the Rainbow by Longmont Suzuki Strings' newest violin teacher, Lisa Hollis. Lisa has been studying Suzuki violin since the age of five. She has a masters degree in violin performance, Suzuki and Kindermusik certifications, and has performed professionally with the Bermuda Philharmonic, Bermuda Festival Orchestra, Josh Groban, Smokey Robinson, Quincy Jones, Kenny Rogers, John Ingram, Patti Austin, John Legend, and Michael McDonald. Originally from Longmont, she has returned to join Longmont Suzuki Strings after teaching violin at the Bermuda School of Music. She is currently accepting new students.

Afterwards, the children performed some of the pre-violin balancing games and bow calisthenics that they learned to help them become comfortable, relaxed, and secure when holding their violin in the correct position.

All too soon , the concert was over and the giddy children raced off to get in line for facepainting and hay rack rides, to pick pumpkins and haul them back to the farm stand in little wagons, and to sample the local fare with their friends.

We would like to sincerely thank Mark and Kena Gutteridge of Ollin Farms for allowing the children to perform. You can find them at the Longmont Farmer's Market on Saturdays (only 2 weekends left!), at their farmstand daily from 10-6, and online at http://www.ollinfarms.com/. Additionally, Ollin Farms is introducing an eight week Fall CSA Share program (which will run October 26- December 18); the application is available online.

We would also like to thank Erron Lacy and Lisa Hollis of Longmont Suzuki Strings, for sharing their expertise with us. You can learn more about their studio and the Suzuki method of instruction, at http://www.longmontsuzukistrings.org/.

Finally, we would like to thank our assistant teacher, Katie Dirrim, for volunteering three hours of her weekend (and supplying the materials) to provide facepainting for the event, Mei Lai for supplying the glitter tattoos, and Deborah Reuter for use of her keyboard for our rehearsals.

Thank you all for your kindness and support!