Keepviolinin

This morning we rehearsed with everyone who will perform ‘Moon Represents My Heart’ in Central Park tonight and here’s a photo to share with everyone:

After a year of teaching and guiding Austin on the violin, I’ve truly experienced how important being a supportive parent is to your child.  Suzuki’s philosophy really stresses on the parent involvement, and I think it’s so great that parents are willing to spend time with their children while they are practicing.  Austin truly looks forward to our daily practices and time spent with mommy.  I try to schedule our lesson time once a week like the rest of my students, but it’s hard for me to not ‘correct’ his posture and act like a teacher when we’re practicing.  I have to constantly tell myself just let him play and enjoy during his practice days.  If you’re a parent and you’re reading my blog, I just want to let you know that just having you being there for your child is already time well spent even if you don’t know how to play the instrument.  I want to thank all the parents who are so supportive and helpful toward their children’s learning process.  You might not feel the reward immediately, but it will come and you will enjoy every moment of it once it does:)

I hope you can take a little bit of time to watch this video and know why we bring our son to a Suzuki Institute every summer. Not only is Austin growing as a musician, he’s also learning such valuable life lessons.  The Institutes also allow me and my husband to meet and make friends with wonderful families all over the world that share the same values as us.  We have made attending these Suzuki Institutes a part of our every summer activity and we hope to see you there! It’s totally worth it!!!:)

We performed before the movie started at our Central Park on a Friday night and it was just the perfect night with no winds and about 70 degrees outside:) Enjoy these photos from me and Mrs. Goody Choi’s studio:

We played through almost all of Book 1 music and a couple of Book 2 pieces:) What a fun night in Mountain House!!!

It was such a privilege to get training from Barbara Barber who is internationally known as a recording artist, pedagogue, publisher, consultant, adjudicator, editor and author.  She is one of the teachers at the Advanced Suzuki Institute at Stanford Univ. this year, so for her teacher training course she picked out 5 repertoires from her Vol.1-Vol.5 Solos for Young Violinists books and thoroughly went through the pieces with us in a one day session. She shared some of her wonderful teaching techniques that I am eager to try out with some of my students in private lesson and group lesson:) I love the different trainings that teachers in America are able to get through the Suzuki Summer Institutes, because I was unable to get any trainings while living in China and Taiwan.  In fact, we had a Malaysian teacher fly out here first attending the Suzuki Institute in Las Vegas, then driving out here to take Barbara’s class and flying back to Malaysia out of LAX the very next day! Here is a photo of me and Barbara Barber along with a photo of Palm Dr. as I left Stanford to come home:)

Palm Dr. leave Stanford University on a Sunday afternoon

Here’s the video of Austin’s final recital performance at Scripps College during the 2012 Southern CA Suzuki Institute:

We had such a wonderful time playing outside today celebrating the birth of our beautiful country, United States of America! Enjoy these photos from our Mountain House Suzuki Strings!

Finally a photo with our town’s superstar and one of the top finalists from American Idol, Thia Megia:)

Enjoy this wonderful recording of Austin with his 93 year old Great-Grandmother playing Musette by J.S. Bach.

Tomorrow is Austin will get baptized and he said this song is his gift to God:) Amen!:)

I just realized I haven’t shared this photo of me and my former violin teacher William Starr along with his wonderful wife Constance Starr who have inspired me and many other musicians.  William Starr just celebrated his 90th birthday and will celebrate his 65th wedding anniversary.  Now looking back at my lessons with him, he truly has shown me what the true value of the Suzuki philosophy was all about.  Each lesson I had with Mr. Starr never once became boring and he always challenged me to become better and helped me to reach my potential.  He emphasized on reviewing old pieces and always reminded me to listen to the recordings.

Thank you Mr. Starr for showing me how to learn with a passion.  Your books have helped me through many years of my teaching and they will continue to help and guide me.  I’m so thankful for your love to teach the violin and bringing the Suzuki philosophy to America:)

Austin doing another review piece today…Long, Long Ago:)