Yes. The title of this graduate course is the perfect description. I know . . . people who hear that I teach students to play string instruments immediately conjure up a vision of ugly out-of-tune Mozart. That's really not what I do . . . at least I try very hard and am successful . . . most of the time. I'm not a native violinist . . . my first choice of a musical instrument was the clarinet. I started playing the clarinet in second grade after a few points of direction from my mom. I am proud to be a third generation clarinetist as my mom and grandfather also played this instrument . . . and modestly know that I'm the most accomplished. I can play the Mozart concerto when someone holds a gun to my head (no this has never happened). I studied clarinet in college with two very talented performers . . . neither of whom ever convinced me that I would learn to like French conservatory clarinet solos. My youngest child also chose the clarinet, probably with the knowledge that he was going to make us pay for his choice of instrument by frequently sharing that he hates band, the clarinet, and most of all that dreaded PRACTICE. Anyway, I digress . . . going on a tangent is something that I learned in my pre-highstakes-testing education days . . . I am thankful that I was never forced to memorize the tenants of the five paragraph essay! Back on topic . . . strings. Yes, I teach strings and because I'm not a native violinist, I frequently take graduate courses in the summers. Through this study, I've become pretty good on this instrument and my kids have no idea that it's not my main instrument. Also, I have made a wonderful discovery over the past few years . . . I am a fiddle player at heart. Fiddle music feeds my soul. I think it's a connection to all those campfire songs that I sang as a child . . . now we teach tunes from television cartoons like Sponge Bob, folk songs and campfire tunes are no longer the staple of public school music program. Oops . . . I digress again. Back to fiddle music. A few years ago I attended a graduate course called "The Pittsburgh Jazz and Fiddle Camp". This camp has been renamed "Strings Without Boundaries" and I chose to enroll in this camp for the second time this summer. It's a special secret of mine that one of the few perks of being a music teacher is that I get to study things like fiddle music. Other "real" teachers have to take things like "Classroom Management for Autistic Students" and "Interpretation and Use of Scoring Rubrics for Dreaded Standardized Tests". Me . . . I fly under the radar and take music courses that feed my soul and inspire me to once again walk into school on the first day of classes.
Fiddle music is amazing! It has melody that is frequently lyrical and playful . . . two of my requirements for music that I like. It's fun, it's worldly . . . and best of all MY STUDENTS LIKE TO PRACTICE IT!!! Quite simply, today's kids don't practice Mozart. They just don't. They are too busy running from school to girl scouts to soccer practice to Broadway dance classes to the mounds of homework that we give them in our attempts to say that we have good standardized test scores. Parents don't get involved with music lessons and put it on my shoulders to inspire their over-programmed kids to practice. So . . . I have to resort to tricking them into wanting to practice. Fiddle music is the best way to do this . . . give them Devil's Dream and I know that next week I'll hear those magical words--"Mrs. M., look what I can do!"
Now, I know that I am never going to be a world class fiddler but I can keep up with my fifth graders. This summer, something special happened. I got to study fiddle music with an American treasure of a fiddler . . . Richard Greene. Richard has invented techniques used in bluegrass music. As a teenager, he played with Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys. No, I had never heard of this group but apparently it was the granddaddy of bluegrass music. Now, Richard is a Grammy nominated/awarded bluegrass fiddler. I didn't know this until I checked out his website. When I worked with him, he was this nice gray haired gentleman who could play the snot out of his fiddle. I could tell that he was a well trained, i.e. classically trained, fiddler. He uses good hand position and knows how to shift. He can also play the most complicated doublestops that I have ever seen. He spent most of the week harping on our accents on beat three and complaining that we were using too much bow on beat four. This got old after a day or two but by the end of the week I could hear the effect of better control. On the last day, he got all misty-eyed and said that we were the best group of beginners that he had worked with in his time in Pittsburgh (yeah! I fooled him!). At the end of the last day, I attended a panel discussion and listened to him talk about the early influences on his musical development. I began to realize that this guy was part of American bluegrass history. He knew some serious people. When you play for the Academy Awards, you're someone. Seriously!
All week long, I had been chomping at the bit to play some Irish/Scottish/Cape Breton/New England style fiddle music. This isn't what Richard does. He does bluegrass music . . . basically fiddle music with a lot of really fast notes. When he played for us on the last day, some of his lessons sunk in. I could here the emphasis on the backbeats and could see why he kept saying "less bow, less bow". But mostly, I could see his love for this music and his wanting to share that love. Richard was not a trained teacher but he truly wanted to inspire young students to seek out his genre . . . it occurred to me that this is why I seek out these summer experiences. I often don't know how to regenerate my love for music after the grueling challenges of teaching music in public schools. This is why I enroll in courses like this. A little part of Richard Greene is going to be present in my classroom in August.
Somehow, I think that my grandfather would have liked this.
