By Janice L. Mayer
I confess that I’m addicted to Law & Order.
Special Victim’s Unit is my favorite, but Criminal Intent distracts me just as easily. I blame this new habit squarely on a friend in Houston. I used to watch Anderson Cooper 360, but when the real world issues seemed unfathomable, we agreed that it seemed better to tune into a show that solves a problem in less than sixty minutes!
The other night I was zoning-out in the blue-ish glow of another TV homicide, when it turned out that the murder was solved by evidence found at the crime scene: a violin bow. What, a classical music reference on commercial television? Now the episode really had my attention! Let’s forget the fact that the bow was used in an unspeakable act, or that the murderer was tracked down through the improbable clue involving the uniqueness of the violinist’s bow hair fibers. (Most violinists replace the hair on their bows every three months or so, depending on how much they practice. There are only a few sources of the materials used, so the concept that the hair on the murderer’s bow was especially distinct is, shall we say, highly suspect.) Never mind, let’s not muddy the waters with facts. Somehow a violin captured the script writers’ attention enough that the instrument became central to the story line.
I’m told that more people choose to play the violin than any other instrument, so it’s capturing a whole lot of people’s attention these days, not just the writers of a television drama. Why the violin? I decided to take a closer look.
Violinist Kevin Lawrence, an alumni of The Juilliard School and a faculty member at North Carolina School of the Arts, recalls being seduced by the instrument when he was in public elementary school in Massachusetts. In third grade a string teacher came to the school to recruit music students and players for the school orchestra. Kevin recalls that “I was amazed at how the bow and strings interacted and made a sound; the creation of sound was fascinating to me.” He convinced his parents to rent a violin through the school program and he began group lessons with a group of beginners. In fifth grade his family relocated to Bergen County, New Jersey. An initial disappointment that the system did not offer a string program was more than overcome when it was discovered that Beverly Somach, a former child prodigy who was a Concert Artists Guild Winner in 1953 and one of a very few students of the celebrated violinist, Jascha Heifetz lived in the community. Private lessons began at the Lawrence family house.
Kevin’s violin study was largely a solitary pursuit. Aside from his teacher, “nobody I knew had any connection to classical music. I grew up listening to all kinds of music, certainly not just the violin masterpieces. We didn’t talk about music in the family. It wasn’t talked about at school. I spent my practice hours trying to control the instrument and make it sound the way I wanted it to sound. For me it was about making a sound that pleased me.”
As he began his last year of high school, Kevin had been accepted to the North Carolina School of the Arts, but chose to enroll at the Pre-College Division of The Juilliard School instead. He found himself in the midst of “a lot of kids who shared the same passion and excitement, but who had been working very hard for their whole childhood – it was a reality check!” At Juilliard, he was stimulated by his classmates and by the cornucopia of concert opportunities now open to him in New York City. “I remember seeing Isaac Stern play the Beethoven Concerto at Avery Fisher Hall and many concerts by the New York Philharmonic. And at Juilliard, The American Quartet had just won the Naumburg and my classmates were Cho-Liang ‘Jimmy’ Lin and Robert ‘Bobby’ McDuffie – people who are now at the highest level of the profession; it was incredibly stimulating.” But perhaps more poignant, he realized that “music was not his own private universe, and the process of opening up to other musicians and ideas began.” Upon reflection, this realization at the age of seventeen seems to have been a pivotal moment, and informed his future career as an advocate for chamber music.
A residency at the University of Virginia, led to a position at Baylor University in Texas and eventually to the faculty at North Carolina School of the Arts – ironically the school he had turned down to continue his studies in New York. But perhaps most influential in his studies were the fourteen summers he spent at Meadowmount String Festival. His personal studies and his five years teaching there, motivated him to establish another summer string festival in a bucolic setting. “I wanted to create an atmosphere that had the same degree of focus while creating a supportive environment with an emphasis on human warmth and kindness.” By now Kevin was married to his wife Barb, a social worker, and her influences can be felt to this day at The Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington where she continues to serve as Business Manager. A key difference in his experience in the two festivals was that “Meadowmount did not offer faculty performance opportunities and by the end of the summer I felt dried up. I realized that I was a better teacher when I continued to play. At Green Mountain we program faculty concerts which enrich the Burlington community, hopefully inspire the student body and rejuvenate the faculty.”
I had expected to hear anxiety in Kevin Lawrence’s voice as I interviewed the Artistic Director of a budding summer classical music festival. After all, these days economic woes are front page news in every newspaper from the Wall Street Journal to the Financial Times of London. Bucking the trend, the Festival launched its first successful annual appeal in December 2008 and applications to Green Mountain are actually up 5% over last year. Why are parents investing in summer music programs for their offspring as they watch their financial investments dwindle? “Some parents want their progeny to enter the professional music world. Others see it more in terms of providing a growth opportunity for their children. Most of the students don’t know as clearly as I did that this is what they want to do. I want to encourage them to work hard, but I also want to be sure that they wake up in the morning with a love for it as well. Whatever their initial motivation, at some point the violinist’s aspirations will be confronted by the realities of the American music scene and students will either be able to mesh into the field or not.”
Frank Salomon, long time Co-Administrator of the Marlboro Festival, a summer festival located near Brattleboro, Vermont sees no slow down in audition applications for Marlboro or for the New York String Orchestra Seminar. The String Orchestra Seminar invites exceptionally talented musicians ranging in age from fifteen to twenty-two years of age to New York City over the Christmas holidays/ winter school break to perform in an orchestra formation at Carnegie Hall under the leadership of Music Director Jaime Laredo. Marlboro, on the other hand, focuses on more fully-developed players, Frank clarifies. “The usual age at Marlboro is twenty-two or twenty-three, with an occasional exception such as Benjamin Beilman who is all of nineteen now. The emphasis at Marlboro is chamber music. And yes, we do have a larger number of violinists than other string players, but it is proportion to the complement required in a string quartet (2 violins, 1 viola and 1 cello).We immerse these players in the chamber music repertoire playing side-by-side with master artists, with unlimited rehearsal time and without the pressure of performing. We strive to give them the tools to become thoughtful musicians with something to say, not just fine instrumentalists; in essence to encourage them to illuminate the composer. Creating an integrated musical and human experience is a goal at Marlboro. It is of reciprocal benefit to the experienced participants and the younger participants alike. The senior artists are inspired by their young colleagues, and the experience of a young player sitting down over dinner and discussing everything from sports to a piece that they are working on with a musician whose records s/he has collected over the years is an amazing and unique experience.” Incidentally, over the years ten or twelve string quartets were spawned at Marlboro and went on to have international careers. The Guarneri String Quartet launched its forty-five (45 – wow!) year career at Marlboro in 1964 and played an average of one hundred concerts a year for most of that time.
No matter what the long-term professional result, Kevin believes “Music study has an impact far beyond the direct appreciation and ability in music. It satisfies various aspects of human growth: patience, objectivity, perseverance and an appreciation of beauty. These are qualities that we have prized over the centuries and which will no doubt continue to benefit the generations to come.” I’m sure that Frank Salomon and his colleagues at Marlboro agree.
The nurturing and contemplative atmosphere at these two summer festivals, along with the beautiful green rolling mountains of Vermont, help inspire a musician to discover his or her inner musical voice. In contrast, the pulsating rhythm of New York City encourages the detectives on Law & Order to wrap up a case in a quick 60-minute segment. And who knows, with the advances in communication technology, maybe they’ll have to wrap it up in twitter-length one of these days. That’s even fast for Manhattan!