When I arrived at St. Joseph’s National School in the north of Dublin, Ireland, early one morning about five years ago, I had very little idea what to expect. Dorothy Conaghan, whom I had met a few years earlier while teaching at a Suzuki workshop in France, had invited me to visit this school in the economically challenged district of Ballymun. By the end of an unforgettable day of music, I knew that I definitely wanted to find a way to return, again and again.
At eight in the morning, Dorothy and Brian Clarke, the charismatic principal of St. Joseph’s, introduced…
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