Keepviolinin

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:)

Anyone who is interested in attending this? I think we might just make a family trip to Japan next spring!!!:)

http://16thwc.suzukimethod.or.jp/en/information.html

Enjoy!!:)

After 1 year of moving back to the states, our son, Austin, asked us if he can get baptized.  We were so happy to hear that he wanted to make this commitment and just to share his faith with everyone, here’s a video of him giving his prayer:) Another video will soon follow, which was recorded today when we played Go Tell Aunt Rhody as a review:)

This morning I attended a couple of really helpful sessions:
1. The Road to Mozart:Getting Ready for the Concertos
2. A Few Ideas from John Kendall’s Teaching Legacy

I got a lot of great teaching points from these sessions, but the one that really stuck in my mind is John Kendall’s ‘Finger, Bow, Go’ approach.

I feel very blessed to be able to attend this conference. Another teacher and I were discussing about how we learned more here than at the summer institutes, but our brain gets tired pretty quickly due to alllll the information given to us. I look forward to organizing my notes along with some photos from the conference when I get back home tomorrow night:)

Have a safe Memorial Day weekend everyone:)

I had great lessons this afternoon, but I am particularly fond of a lesson I gave/didn’t give to a little girl. The reason I say I didn’t really give the lesson was because we didn’t go over any of the notes from the piece she was supposed to play for me. I just asked her to play it for me because she told me she could already memorize it. Both the mom and I were in shock when I played through the duet part for her while she memorized the entire piece without any mistakes. How in the world did she do that you ask?? Mostly because she listened to the CD a lot and recognized all the notes from the piece from previous songs. What is the piece you ask? It’s called Long, Long Ago:) I believe the mom is still in a state of shock and being proud of her daughter at the same time:) I hope my students or any musicians out there, just remember to always listen to what you are playing…it really works!!!:)