South Island Suzuki Winter Workshop
7-10 July 2024
Sunday
My family and I are all very happy to be back at winter workshop after a gap of 2 years. The kids are doing violin and even my husband has picked up violin as an adult beginner so he's participating in the fiddling classes for the first time! The workshop is being held at the Christchurch Rudolf Steiner school and I'm on the committee, so we got there early to help set up.
The above photo was of play-in, which was at 4pm. The violins, cellos and guitars all played various pieces and the two piano students played a few pieces together on the grand piano.
Monday
This was the first day of classes. Most children have three 1-hour classes each day. They do a masterclass, group lesson and either music enrichment or fiddling. The masterclass involves 2-4 children of a similar playing ability taking turns to have an individual lesson with the teacher while the others watch. The group lesson is a group of 6-15 children of a similar playing level all playing pieces together. The more advanced children do fiddling for their 3rd class. This has the violin, cello and guitar children all playing fiddling pieces together. It sounds like great fun! Children in the earlier books do Music Enrichment for their 3rd class. The contents of this class depends on the teacher and this year it is me so the classes are based on Music Mind Games, which teaches music theory using big cards and games on the floor, as you can see in the above photo.
Tuesday
This was the second full day of classes. After the classes, the cello teacher, Sally-Anne, gave a parent talk. She spoke about two Suzuki events she has attended recently. She went to a big workshop in Australia and also to a teachers' conference in Japan. The Japanese one was held in Matsumoto, where Dr Suzuki set up his Talent Education school in the 1940s and started what is now known as the Suzuki method. She said that the Japanese teachers are very un-rushed and they often quote the words: As the twig is bent, so grows the tree. This means that children grow into adults who tend to behave the way they were taught to behave as children. This reminds us that early influences are very important on children's development.
Wednesday
Third and final day of classes. Although there were only 2 students properly enrolled for piano at this workshop, by the end we had another 5 participating in the group playing, as you can see in the photo above. The school has quite a few keyboards so it was nice that the children could have a keyboard each when we played our piano pieces at the play-out concert.
A decade or two ago, we had lots of children playing piano at this workshop but currently there are no Suzuki piano teachers running large studios in the South Island and without the teachers, there aren't the students. I teach mostly online so my students are very spread out, geographically, and none of them came to workshop this year. I do think the demand for Suzuki piano lessons in the South Island is there, we just need the teachers. If you'd like to learn by webcam or if you happen to live near Motueka, I'm available 🙂
At the play-out concert today, each instrument group played some pieces. You'll see the pianos playing in the photo above and below is the large violin group playing with the cellos in the background watching. The guitars were there too, but not visible in this photo.
A highlight of the concert is always the fiddling. This gets the more advanced violin, cello and guitar children all playing together at a hundred miles an hour. For one of the pieces, Marion said they were going to play it 4 times: slow, medium, fast and super-fast. She then counted it in at what I would call an already super-fast pace so I really wondered whether they would manage to go 3 notches faster! but they did, wow!
After the concert everyone said goodbye and headed home. The committee and helpers stayed behind to tidy up and to put the teaching rooms back to how they were before we started. It was another good workshop.
Maybe I'll see you there next year...