Caroline Fraser

The 26th International Suzuki Festival and 5th Latin American Suzuki Teachers’ Conference were held in Lima, Peru, in January 2011. More than 1500 people attended these events with participants traveling from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Scotland, Switzerland, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, the United States and from all over Peru.

Many thanks to our SAA Teacher Trainers: David Evenchick, Doris Koppelman, Mary McCarthy, Marilyn O’Boyle, Fernando Piñero, Mary Lou Roberts, Shinobu Saito, Ann Montzka Smelser and Kelly Williamson. In addition to Suzuki courses, workshops for teachers in Dalcroze and Kodaly were offered by Iramar Rodriques from Switzerland and Lydia Mills from California. For David and Ann it was their first time in Latin America.

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X National Workshop, Iquitos May 10-15

Iquitos is a city in the Amazon jungle. It is accessible only by plane or by river. This was the first Suzuki event ever held in the jungle region of Peru.

Everything began in July 2009 in California, when Gretchen Klein, a participant in the Holy Names University Teacher Training Institute expressed interest in helping the Suzuki program in Peru. She was particularly interested in Iquitos as she had been there. Gretchen made a donation to our Latin American Scholarship Fund, earmarking it for a participant from the jungle city of Iquitos.

Thanks to an agreement between…

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From the Suzuki Association of Peru: Caroline Fraser and Roberta Centurion

I Encuentro de Alumnos Suzuki de América Latina
(The First Latin American Suzuki students “Get-together”)
January 9th through the 12th, 2010, Lima, Peru

This was a historic occasion for Suzuki programs in the Americas and the result of a long-time dream of the Latin American Suzuki teachers. An “Encuentro” is literally a “meeting together.” Children from…

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cavelicaVIII Taller Nacional en Huancavelica

Compilado por Caroline Fraser
Asociación Suzuki del Perú
VIII Taller Nacional en Huancavelica, Mayo 20-24, 2009.
Traducido por Ximena Marky

Todos los años, la Asociación Suzuki del Perú (ASP) organiza un taller fuera de la ciudad de Lima. El propósito del evento es brindar apoyo a profesores y alumnos del Perú que se encuentran geográfica y económicamente marginados. Este año, el taller se realizó en la región menos accesible del Perú: Huancavelica. La provincia de Huancavelica se sitúa al centro del país, en lo alto de las montañas. No hay un aeropuerto cerca. Desde Lima, hay que viajar 7 hasta…

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XXIV Festival International, Lima Peru, January 4th-30th, 2009

Around 250 teachers and 500 students attended this year’s successful festival held in Lima, Peru. Participants travelled from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, México, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela to attend. The majority of the students and teachers came from all over Peru, many from remote areas, making arduous bus journeys to arrive in the capital city. Many of the students and teachers participated in the festival on scholarships thanks to our generous donors.

Our excellent teacher training faculty comprised of Beth Goldstein McKee, Marilyn O’Boyle, Nancy Lokken, MaryLou Roberts, Mary Halverson Waldo,…

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Course organizer Angela Holguin

An Every Child Can course took place on June 3, 2008, at the National Conservatory of Music in Santo Domingo. This course was organized by Angela Holguin, in coordination with Marta Hernandez in Puerto Rico (only an hour away by plane!) and sponsored by the Gisela Foundation. Angela had written to me asking if I could possibly teach an additional course. She had filled the class quota of 30 and had almost as many on a waiting list! Unfortunately as I only had one day in the Dominican Republic, it was impossible to add another course to the schedule.

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An Every Child Can course and a Kodaly Workshop organized by Marta Hernandez took place in San Juan from May 30 through June 1, 2008. These courses were sponsored by the National Conservatory of Music, the Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y el Caribe, the Hotel Gallery Inn and the Gisela Foundation. Gisela Inés Garcia was a very active and beloved Suzuki violin teacher who died in March, 2005, at the age of 32. The Foundation was formed in her name to continue her life’s work. It is remarkable how this act has truly kept Gisela alive in everyone’s hearts; Gisela’s passion for teaching young children is contagious. Everywhere I went I met Gisela’s friends and family who radiated pure joy when her name was mentioned, while supporting this project with enthusiasm and love.

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Piano group activity

Every year the Suzuki Association of Peru holds two National Workshops: one in Lima, the capital of Peru, and one in another region of the country. These workshops are designed for low income families and for teachers and students living outside the capital city. The VII National Workshop took place in the city of Ayacucho, which lies in the central part of Peru in the Andean mountains. The event was held at the Cultural Centre of the National University of San Cristobál de Huamanga, which was founded in 1677. The University, the Municipality of Huamanga and the Suzuki Association of Peru jointly sponsored the workshop. I taught a Suzuki philosophy course, and an Early Childhood Music workshop was given by Cecilia Rodriguez from Lima. Erick Escalaya, director of the organizing committee in Ayacucho, wrote about the Early Childhood Music course: “The teachers were left speechless by this marvelous course and by the professional qualities of the teacher Ceci. One of the parents said that this course had changed the way he would now bring up his children.” This alone makes the workshop worthwhile!

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Lima, Peru
January 5-24, 2008

Over 200 teachers and 400 students attended this successful event held in Newton College in the capital city of Peru. The SAA teacher trainers were Marilyn O’Boyle, Nancy Lokken, Nancy Hair, Virginia Dixon, MaryLou Roberts, Doris Koppelman and Mary Halverson Waldo, all from the USA; Kelly Williamson from Canada; Eduardo Ludueña and Fernando Piñero from Argentina; Caroline Fraser from Peru and for the first time Mary McCarthy from Scotland.

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The V National Suzuki Workshop

Huancayo V National Suzuki Workshop poster.

On May 15-20, 2007, the V National Suzuki Workshop of Peru was held in Huancayo in the Andean mountains from 15th-20th of May, 2007. It was sponsored jointly by the Asociación Suzuki del Peru and CHEA-El Centro Humanista de Expresión Artística. A dedicated organizational team was led by workshop directors Sabino Blancas and Rocio Villa. Annika Petrozzi, Isaac Garcia, Roberta Centurión, Luciana Castillo and Caroline Fraser made the eight-hour bus journey from Lima to teach cello, recorder, guitar and piano students. Allyson Abram traveled from Cusco to give violin lessons.

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Lima, Peru, January 8-27, 2007

One of our most inspiring participants was Cecilia Zarate, a former Suzuki piano and violin student from Cordoba, Argentina, home to one of the oldest Suzuki programs in Latin America. Now a professional violinist and teacher, she had studied as a child with Eduardo Ludueña, now Latin America’s newest violin teacher trainer. Cecilia had come to Peru for Nancy Lokken’s course on “How to Teach Musicality,” and for Roxana del Barco’s and Lucha del Rio’s course on “Early Childhood Music.” At the Festival, Cecilia offered to play in the Teachers’ Orchestra that would accompany the student soloists. She asked me to give her the program a little early, a day before the first rehearsal. I had to tell her that it hadn’t yet been set. The program was announced on the morning of the first rehearsal. As she sat in the orchestra that afternoon, during the rests she lightly ran her fingers over her Braille transcriptions of the music. Afterwards, she apologized for occasionally confusing the bowings. A few days later, Cecilia played the entire orchestral concert repertoire from memory. Her serenity and joy was an example for us all.

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4th National Suzuki Workshop
September 30-October 1st
Lima, Peru

Eric Escalaya, guitarist from Ayacucho had traveled over 12 hours by bus to participate in this two-day workshop which was sponsored by the Suzuki Association of Peru. He had been the only participant from Ayacucho attending the International Suzuki Festival which was held in January of this year. Now, eight months later, he traveled with five colleagues. Many of the 90 participants, had traveled overnight by bus from different parts of Peru to Lima on Friday, to return home on Sunday night and be back at school or work on Monday.

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“I can state without being afraid of being wrong that instead of understanding the Mother Tongue Approach, we have to feel it, talk about it and live it, until it becomes part of our very being.”
—Marcos Santiago, philosophy class participant

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January 10th-25th, 2006

The Suzuki Association of Peru is very grateful to the SAA and to those who donated to the Latin American Suzuki Scholarship fund. The results of this generosity of spirit are immeasurable and far-reaching. Over sixty foreign scholarship recipients returned to their countries following the festival, with a new vision for their teaching. Many see the Peru festival as a model for their own teacher training programs. This year we hosted teachers from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, México, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela.

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November 12 and 13, 2005

The Suzuki Association of Peru is committed to spreading the Suzuki philosophy throughout the country, including those regions where people are geographically and economically disadvantaged. Our Association sponsors two national workshops during the year, in addition to the annual festivals, in order to provide teachers and their students with ongoing training and support.

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“I’d rather be a sparrow than a snail…” made famous by Simon and Garfunkel, is actually a Peruvian composition, “El condor pasa” written by Daniel Alomia Robles from Huánuco. The Second National Suzuki Workshop in Peru was held in the house where Robles was born. The house is now known as the Instituto Superior de Musica Publico “Daniel Alomia Robles”.

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Compilado por Caroline Fraser; traducido por Caroline Fraser y Claudia Woll, Perú y Margarita Troetsch, Panamá

Taller de Lectura Musical, Santiago, Chile; 3-6 de enero del 2005

Por Blancamaria Montecinos, Presidenta, Asociación Suzuki de Chile

En esta oportunidad invitamos a Caroline Fraser a quien extrañábamos mucho, ya que desde el año 2000, no habíamos podido tener cursos con ella. El taller fue un éxito tanto para profesores como para alumnos. Los niños la pasaron muy bien. Fue divertido para ellos y tan natural que querían continuar averiguando qué más podían leer de manera tan fácil. Fue muy útil para nosotros ver…

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