Boy have I been having fun being the Chair of the Suzuki Association Board; this past spring was especially exciting. In April, the end of our third Board meeting of the year dovetailed with the Western Springs School of Talent Education’s 25th anniversary celebration at Symphony Hall in Chicago, so I was able to witness a beautiful concert by WSSTE faculty, students, and alumni in an historic venue. Congratulations to Ed Kreitmann, Tom Wermuth, Nancy Jackson, Sally Gross and all the staff at WSSTE a quarter century of excellence.
In early May, I was asked to help celebrate the Greater Philadelphia Suzuki Association’s becoming the 7th official affiliate chapter of the SAA, a celebration especially meaningful to me because my sons’ Suzuki teacher, Linda Fiore, was one of the pioneer Suzuki teachers in the Philadelphia area and was present to help her colleagues celebrate. Congratulations to co-Presidents Sue Bakshi and Chris Hagy and all of the members of the GPSA for taking this important step towards strengthening and broadening the Suzuki learning community.
Then at the end of May, there was that spectacular 12th biennial Conference. Every event, concert, or presentation I witnessed was truly excellent and worthwhile. It was a hoot perambulating the hotel in my red apron selling raffle tickets and imbibing all the positive buzz. I would, however, feel a little guilty when someone would thank me for such a great Conference. The thanks really go to all those SAA volunteers and staff that made the Conference possible. So on behalf of the Board, our deepest appreciation to SAA executive director Pam Brasch, the SAA staff, Conference Coordinator Carol Ourada, and all of the SAA members who volunteered so much of their time and talent to make the Conference a success.
The fun didn’t stop there. On June 10, I had the privilege of serving as the Master of Ceremonies for the School for Strings 35th Anniversary Celebration in Carnegie Hall’s Isaac Stern Auditorium—another magnificent concert. I’m sure both Mr. Stern and Dr. Suzuki were smiling happily as the concert closed with 750 violinists playing the Twinkle variations from the stage and orchestra section of that hallowed hall. Moreover, this celebration acknowledged the 35 years of SFS making Suzuki instruction accessible to a broad spectrum of New York City’s population. Congratulations to SFS’s indomitable founder, Louise Behrend, and all those involved (Sasha Yudkovsky, Allen Lieb, the entire SFS faculty and staff), in the execution of this landmark event.
If there were similar celebrations of the Suzuki spirit in the Americas, I am sorry I missed them. If you’re having an important event or celebration, invite me, my successor, or one of my Board colleagues and we’ll do our best to show up.
Even at the Board level, this past year was fun and productive. As I reported in the past, I believe we did a good job of taking the feedback gleaned from the 2005 Retreat and the subsequent Summer Institutes and using it as a guide and inspiration for strengthening our Ends policies that address excellence. We were particularly successful in fund-raising this …Stop, hey, what’s that sound, Everybody look what’s going down… [1] Sorry about the rock and roll interruption, but as heartfelt and true as everything I’ve just written is, it sounds just a little bit too self-satisfied for my taste. Enough congratulating ourselves. One of the most striking anecdotes about Dr. Suzuki I heard at the Conference’s Heritage Night described his arriving at the teaching studio each day with a new idea to try. What a wonderful antidote to complacency!
We have clearly had a year where our learning community was strengthened, a year where we demonstrated and celebrated progress towards our goals of making Suzuki education excellent and accessible. But is it good enough? At least once or twice a month, I receive calls from local parents asking me for names of Suzuki teachers for their kids, and I often don’t have a response. Here in Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, as excellent Suzuki teachers with registered training move on, we have had trouble attracting similarly trained teachers to take their place. The demand for Suzuki teaching has simply outstripped the supply in my locality, and I’ve heard numerous stories of similar or worse situations in other areas.
So we can still do better, trying hard at the Board and Association level to craft policies and structures that will encourage more teacher training while retaining our standards of excellence. Inevitably, most of the advances will come at the local level by various means—Suzuki schools improving conditions for teachers; present Suzuki teachers encouraging excellent students who have gone on to study music at college to consider Suzuki teacher training; teachers and administrators making sure we are kindly asking our students and their families for compensation commensurate with the value of what we offer, etc. I realize these are only a few steps and that they might not be appropriate for every area covered by the SAA. Nor is the supply/demand disparity the only challenge we face. Nonetheless, each of us can strive to identify and address the needs of the Suzuki community close to home.
One of the unique advantages we have in the Suzuki community is that we constantly share our new ideas. Please take advantage of the linkage opportunities the SAA provides in order to communicate your new idea, your success, your problem. Those opportunities to connect include the Retreats and the Conferences but also the services available on the SAA webpage (chat room, job listings, etc.).
I believe Dr. Suzuki would be pleased to see us celebrate our success and our excellence, but we should wake up every day and follow Dr. Suzuki’s example by imagining something new that will improve our teaching, our parenting, or the accessibility of our beautiful Method to the families around us.
[1] From the song “For What It’s Worth” by Buffalo Springfield.
