Chair’s Column

The sun is shining brightly as I sit and write this column. It is a week before Thanksgiving and although this holiday will be long over by the time you are reading this, I hope you will join me in giving thanks for the very special lives we have all encountered due to our original mentor, Shinichi Suzuki.

In early October, a very special event was held outside of Boston for Suzuki teacher trainers from all over the world. This was the first meeting of its kind and will become a part of Suzuki history. Teacher trainers were represented from all…

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The thought of being Chair of the SAA Board is causing me great excitement. Although I have had a two-year “break in” period, I feel there is still so much to learn, given the scope of our organization. With over 7500 members in 10 areas (violin, viola, cello, bass, piano, flute, guitar, harp, recorder, organ, plus voice, Suzuki in the Schools and ECE) serving teachers, parents and administrators, we are a diversified group with a wide variety of needs.

I would like to publicly thank Diane Schroeder, my predecessor, for the gentle patience, vision and financial wisdom that she shared with…

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As I write my last column as Chair of the Board of the SAA, I wish to look forward to what the SAA can become. Your SAA Board has the charge to be visionary and to see that the organization has the funds it needs to see that vision become a reality.

Fundraising is crucial to any non-profit, and an international organization such as ours needs to be creative in finding those individuals, corporations and foundations that are interested in talent education. It takes hard work and determined effort to fundraise, but more importantly, it takes team effort. The SAA Board…

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I think it is appropriate in the Chair Column to share some of the activities of the Board. The minutes, of course, are the record of the proceedings but cannot contain the depth of thought and energy present at an SAA Board meeting. I hope you read the minutes published in the Directory and realize that much discussion and consideration goes into motions and decisions.

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It has been a year since I began my two-year term as Chair of the SAA Board. The Board is to be a visionary Board, but it is also of great benefit to look at the work of the Board in the past year and see how it has affected the SAA membership and our place in the world.

At each meeting we are apprised as to how the SAA is doing financially through monitoring reports prepared by our Executive Director. We noted that one of the distinctions of our organization is that we train teachers and educate parents. A large amount of our budget goes to maintaining and expanding what we do in education. The three-fold purpose of the SAA is to:

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There are stories out there. Teachers know them. I have a Suzuki teacher friend who received a call from a woman, now 32, who took Suzuki violin lessons while in foster care as a five year old. She was only able to take for a year and a half while in that foster home, but remembers her lessons, particularly the group lessons, and performing at the Mall. Those are among her precious childhood memories. This teacher and I marveled that she remembered so much and then were just amazed that a foster parent would enroll a child in a Suzuki program even if for a short time. Obviously that foster parent thought it would make a difference and it did. The young woman is now a mother and is seeking the same opportunity for her two small children.

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It was my pleasure to be able to attend the SAGWA (Suzuki Association of the Greater Washington Area) Festival in October. It was one of many festivals or workshop weekends that take place in the Americas throughout the year. Festivals, institutes and workshops help build community in our Suzuki family.

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Preserving Suzuki’s Legacy of Love and Hope

I am writing this as I return from my first meeting as chair of the SAA Board. The new experience as chair reminded me of my first meeting as a board member when the “light came on” about board service and governance.

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Dedicated, Creative and Responsible: these are only three of many words that describe the Suzuki community of teachers, SAA staff members and SAA Board who attended the recent Leadership Retreat at the Nottawasaga Conference Center near Toronto, Canada.

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As an exercise in interdisciplinary collaboration during the next academic year, the arts community at my home institution (Lehigh University) will produce a festival entitled “Words/Music/Images: A Celebration of Convergence.” I like the phrase “Celebration of Convergence”—it describes my most recent Suzuki experience as well as one of my strongly held feelings about my soon-to-end experience serving on the SAA Board of Directors.

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Paul’s Psychic Predictions for the middle of the 21st century:

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As I finish the first of my two years as Chair of the SAA Board of Directors, I’ve been looking back at my experiences and what I’ve written about them and can find some recurring themes: connectivity, the balance of tradition and innovation, love.

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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.

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My compositional mentor was Earl Kim, the great Korean-American composer best known for the sparse brilliance and intense lyricism of his pieces. In my mind, I always connect Earl to my other musical idol, the brilliant, sparse, and intensely lyrical jazz trumpeter Miles Davis. Somehow, and this may seem far-fetched, I now connect these artists of strong conviction and high standards to the nature of the Suzuki Method. As Suzuki puts so much emphasis on the production of beautiful tone, both Kim and Davis spent considerable energy discovering their “sound” or “voice.” As is commonly reported, Davis worked hard to achieve and continually refine his immediately recognizable trumpet sound; Kim allowed very little of the music he wrote before the age of 45 to be performed because he did not feel he had yet discovered his unique compositional voice. Both Davis and Kim had a penchant for reductionism, that is, limiting musical variables in order to better concentrate on a singularly expressive idea.

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I have had the good fortune to live for two extended periods in Italy, my ancestral homeland. Along side the joys one commonly associates with Italy—beautiful landscape, great food, amazing art, etc.—I was most affected by Italy’s penchant for maximizing human contact. Italian cities are designed to funnel their inhabitants to a central meeting place, and Italians are simply in the habit of gathering regularly in those centers to meet and converse with their friends. I had much more success reaching my Italian friends by simply going out for a walk than I did by making a phone call.

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In her closing remarks at the SAA Leadership Retreat in May, my esteemed predecessor as SAA Board Chair, Joanne Melvin, exhorted the Association’s leaders and members to continue to tell their stories. Since then, I have been in the enviable position of hearing many of those “stories”—stories about the history of the Suzuki movement, stories about its founders and early leaders in the Americas, stories from teachers about their challenges, accomplishments, and aspirations, stories from parents about their children’s adjustments to the musical world beyond Suzuki instruction. As a participant in the SAA Board’s discussions about the future of the Association, it is extremely helpful to hear these stories.

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My name is Paul Salerni and I am the new Chair of the Board of Directors of SAA. Since many of you don’t know me, I thought I would spend the first part of this column introducing myself and sharing my history with the Suzuki Method. I am a Professor of Music at Lehigh University where I teach composition and theory and direct the new music ensemble called LUVME (The Lehigh University Very Modern Ensemble). Thanks to firm and trusted advice from my sister-in-law, I became a Suzuki parent in 1990. Both my sons studied violin with Linda Fiore and during a sabbatical semester in 1993 I took Suzuki viola lessons from Linda, joyfully reaching the end of Book 1. My oldest son Domenic has persisted with the violin, graduating from the Pre-College Division at Juilliard this past spring. He will continue violin study with William Preucil, Jr. and Linda Cerone this fall as a freshman at The Cleveland Institute of Music. My son Miles has become an excellent percussionist; moreover, the organizational skills and confidence instilled by the Suzuki Method have been an aid in his facing serious health challenges. Clearly, my children experienced great musical and personal growth as a result of the Suzuki Method in their lives.

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