Mary Halverson Waldo

“Is that a recorder? But it sounds so beautiful!” I hear this exclamation time and again, following Suzuki group or solo concerts. Or, I’ll hear an incredulous observer from the non-Suzuki recorder community such as the American Recorder Society, saying, “How old is that little student?! Can you really teach a child that young?”

These are just two examples of what is happening with Suzuki recorder—the Suzuki community’s recognition that this instrument is a fascinating, ancient and beautiful voice from the past, which has an important place alongside other Suzuki instruments; and the growing awareness in groups such as the American…

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The January 2009 Suzuki Festival in Lima, Peru, was in full swing; but as it progressed I kept trying to find a time to connect with Padre William Lopez. Over the past several years, the young Padre had been bringing increasingly larger groups of kids from his day school in Huancavalica, and many of them had been in my recorder master classes and groups. (I am told that it is the most poverty stricken region of Peru.)

This year he brought no fewer than 20 students, and for the first time I noticed that girls were included. Quiet and well-behaved,…

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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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