The 2nd Suzuki India Children’s Music Conference held from 25th April to 30th April 2016 was a spectacular week of learning and fun, and lots of hard work as well, for 68 students (and their parents!) from Rama Chobhe’s School of Violin in Pune, Winston Collaco’s program in Goa and for visiting students from Mumbai and Delhi.
The first three days of the conference were held in Pune and the last three in Lavasa. The Lavasa portion of the conference, held at the international convention center, surrounded by beautiful hills and adjoining the lake, was a fully immersive musical experience with day long sessions and numerous activities for the participants, teachers and parents.
There were six parallel threads running through the conference, led by internationally renowned teachers and faculty. The students went through these sessions in different groups based on their level of experience.
- Helen Brunner worked on various pieces of the Suzuki repertoire.
- Sarah Walters prepared the students for playing in a Strings Orchestra.
- Jessica Zeigler taught the students various Irish Fiddle music pieces.
- There were music appreciation sessions, with Mrs Vidya Dengle performing a concert and sharing her thoughts on Indian classical music and Dr. Kedar Awati and Arnaud Devic holding a series of discussions and presentations on western classical music appreciation.
- Luthier Andreas Franke took the students and parents through sessions on violin making and repair. There was an exhibition of Indian musical instruments by Hemkant Navdikar.
- The youngest students in the class, some as young as 2.5 years, went through an early childhood musical development program with Sarah Walters, Madhura Gogte, Arthur Fernandes and the team from Taal Inc.
And there was a special series of events where the students themselves got a chance to demonstrate their own skills, musical and otherwise!!
Perfecting the Suzuki Repertoire
Helen Brunner wove her teaching magic while working with the students on their Suzuki repertoire pieces. Each of her sessions, whether it was a master class working with an individual student, or a group training session, was completely enjoyed by the students, the parents, and even the teachers that were listening in!
Helen’s passion for teaching and the violin and music was visible throughout the conference. Starting from her message at the opening concert in Lavasa (Never Give Up, Nourish with Love, and Learn to put your Ego aside), to her talk to the parents where she touched upon what violin playing had meant to her personally, to the closing concert in which she had every member of the audience completely engaged in the performance, Helen was full of energy and creativity and brilliance.
The Strings Orchestra
Sarah Walters spent many tireless hours preparing all the students for playing in an orchestral setting. Even though our Suzuki students spend a lot of time playing together, learning how to play in an orchestra where multiple musicians and instruments complement each other was quite a learning experience. Under Sarah’s instructions, the students learnt about subduing their own individuality and ego, learnt to listen to each other in addition over their own playing, and learnt all about listening to and following the conductor.
The students played multiple pieces in the final concert led by Sarah, including The Happy Squirrel, Show Some Pluck, Bourree in D Minor, and the Western Fiddler.
This conference was Sarah’s second visit to India. Sarah and Rama’s association goes back to the days when Rama Chobhe and a group of her students went to the Suzuki World Conference in Melbourne in 2009. Sarah’s interest in India and common friends brought her to India in 2011 when she conducted her first workshop in the Suzuki school in Pune.
Fiddle Music
Jessica Ziegler worked with the students throughout the conference and had them literally dancing to the sounds and rhythms of Irish folk music and dances like the Gigue and the Reel. By the time of the final concert, the students had made some remarkable progress under Jessica’s guidance.
To give you an idea of what was involved, the Suzuki method repertoire that our students learn is mostly music that is focused on exact notes and rhythm. A lot of the Fiddle music that Jessica was teaching by contrast was folksy and dance-y with a lot of subtle improvisations to give the music its character. Jessica’s way of teaching was different and refreshing for our students and they absorbed it and responded to it without any problem at all — You’ve got a long note in the piece: well, throw in a couple of intermediate notes or a triple in the middle of it! You want to make it zingier – casually throw in some notes that are an octave lower and get this wonderful harmonic feel!! And the students just lapped it up and delivered! Every once in a while, you’d hear Jessica go: “Wow, I feel like I’m in Ireland”, and that would bring a smile to the kids faces!!
Starting them Young
The Early Childhood Music program sessions in the conference were put together with the goal of giving the younger participants (some as young as 2.5 years) an early start into the Suzuki musical journey and into developing a long lasting appreciation of classical music.
The session with Sarah Walters introduced children to music and games, musical notes and the musical alphabet. Sarah held their attention by playing the guitar and the violin and they participated with shakers, bean bags, drums, rattles, bells and anything they could get their hands on!
Arthur Fernandes and the team from Taal enthralled the children and parents alike with their percussion sessions. While the team from Taal introduced the kids to the djembe and its beats and sounds, over the 2 days with Arthur the kids tried a variety of percussion instruments from drums, tambourines, djembe, shakers, music box, Tibetan gong bowl, thunder box, lejhim and many more! A complete stress buster and a great way to pick up the adrenaline for a packed day ahead!
With Madhura Gogte the children sat down to creative craft and made their own instruments and then jumped up and danced to some lively tunes. Madhura also introduced the children to songs from the Grammy nominated album Beethoven’s Wig, which puts simple and fun lyrics to the finest classical pieces. The little toddlers put up an act on Midnight Snack based on Carmens Habanera and also enacted the Schumann Family musical evening with Harmony!
An Evening of Indian Classical Music
Mrs. Vidya Dengle, Rama teacher’s teacher for over 20 years, together with Rama teacher and the tabla accompanist (Ganesh Tanawde) enthralled the conference participants with a selection of Raag’s including Raag Bhimpalas, Raag Sohoni, Raag Mishra Bhairavi. Vidya-tai also talked about her perspective of the intricacies and the state of Indian classical music and also of the guru-shishya parampara in Indian classical music.
Vidya-tai’s session was beautifully complemented by several little children who had selected to perform Indian classical pieces as part of their creative performance session. We had Jayosthute, Vande Mataram, beautiful renditions of classical Marathi songs, and Raag Kalawati. Young Aarya Jagdale’s performance of Raag Bhimpalas in particular stood out – it was performed so gracefully and confidently.
Western Music Appreciation
During the conference, Dr. Kedar Awati and Arnaud Devic took the participants through sessions on western classical music and appreciation.
Dr. Kedar Awati gave three different lectures during the conference. He introduced the youngest students to the orchestra using Benjamin Britten’s “A Young Persons Guide to the Orchestra” including sharing his favorite pieces of western classical music. And when he asked for questions – every hand from the students must have shot up!! The best one of course was this cute little voice saying “What’s the instrument that is played with the Tom and Jerry theme song”.
Dr. Awati’s other sessions included “Another way of listening to Music…the Classical style” and “Some examples from 20th Century Western classical music”.
Arnaud Devic’s sessions were also a lot of fun for the kids. Arnaud, who heads the Poona Music Society, and has been associated with the Suzuki school of Violin for many years had multiple sessions with the students and the parents during the conference. In these sessions, he covered various different aspects of classical music. He also had a selection of musical instruments that he introduced to the students and of course every student wanted to play each and every instrument that Arnaud was talking about!!
Creative Performances from the Students
One of the high points of the last two days in Lavasa was the Creative Performance sessions put together by the students themselves!! When the event organizers were looking to find some open time slots on the calendar, there were some thoughts that there wouldn’t be enough entries for the Creative Performances. The organizers got that completely and totally wrong….there were eventually some 50 entries from the 68 students present here and the Creative Sessions were absolutely the most popular ones for the kids.
And they were truly creative…we had medleys from Bollywood, Goan folk songs, medleys from Hollywood, a Wedding song from South Africa, Darth Vader come to life, beautiful pieces like Ode to Joy, and even a little Paganini herself that performing possibly the toughest song for a violinist – 24 Caprices!!!
Musical Instruments
We had several breakout sessions going through the conference. Andreas Franke who runs a violin workshop in Bangkok had several invaluable sessions on how to take care of the violin, and multiple sessions describing how violins are built. Every spare breathing moment in between was consumed fixing violins, fixing pegs, and cleaning up bows. We’ve got a lot of happily re-furbished violins courtesy Andy and his colleague from Franke Violins!!
The Indian musical instruments exhibition and session staged by Mr. Hemkant Navdikar on the last day of the conference was also well attended and well received.
Staying Fit
Dr. Sharmilee Rao Jadhav, a practicing physiotherapist, took multiple sessions with the students, parents and teachers. She had the students loosened up and made aware of why it was important to warm up, what sorts of stretching exercises to do, and which parts of the body violinists needed to work on. And she did it in the most fun and engaging ways – there were balloons, and play-doh, and resistance bands, and dancing, and Simon Says games!!!
This was truly a world class conference and workshop that has enriched us in so many ways that we cannot even imagine – the scope and execution were truly visionary. We will certainly remember this conference for a very long time and even though it will take a while to digest and internalize the learnings over this conference, we’re already looking forward to the next conference, and meeting up with the faculty again!!!