Rehearsing for Life (12/15/23)

We are a non-profit community music school and preschool. In December, we are full of concerts and performances that celebrate the students' work, music, and bring us together with holiday spirit.  Concerts and solo performing in the Suzuki learning environment is very natural and impressive. 

Our students mostly learn by ear.  As they get older, our core curriculum's musicianship program builds skills so that music reading is part of the older students' skills. While our students learn non-Suzuki repertoire using the musical score, they also memorize, polish and perform these pieces with similar ease to the repertoire that is part of the Suzuki method. (For those not familiar to the Suzuki method, the repertoire is drawn from standard Classical pieces and organized in a sequential, pedagogic and musical progression.)

All our core students perform in solo recitals, group performances in the community, graduation concerts, and outreach to seniors or less-advantaged communities.  We have restarted our In Harmony tour group after a temporary hiatus due to the pandemic. More recently, we formed an adult ensemble that has performed as part of Newton's June PorchFest 2023. These performances of our students are a part of school, and sometimes we may take them for granted. Nevertheless, teachers, parents, and family members attend these performances with pride for their students' achievements. 

Performing does not come easily to everyone. In fact, performing can cause a lot of anxiety and stress. In our Suzuki community there is a priority to develop the heart of the child.  We emphasize the process in learning, and preparing for a performance requires rehearsing.  Mental preparation for the concert is part of the process and is a life skill that we teach through music.  However, mental preparation, practicing, and rehearsing is developed as a life skill for any situation they may encounter---even as adults. We give our students multiple opportunities to rehearse: through playing together as a group, playing alone in front of a group, rehearsing in a lesson by imagining one is walking across the stage before sitting down to play a piece, or rehearsing at home with parents or stuffed animals watching.  Anxiety from performing can be reduced by understanding that not one single moment needs to perfect.  We allow repetition of the performance piece in many situations before the actual concert performance occurs.  Knowing that one has multiple chances reduces the anxiety of the actual concert. Mental and physical preparation are key to managing anxiety. In our school, we believe in teaching the process of learning and preparing.

Our worst judge is often ourselves.  Learning to be kind to oneself is also part of the process of preparing the performance.  Learning to practice and noticing what is good, what feels right, what is correct--are elements of the Suzuki music lesson and group classes. We break down the technical and musical elements of a piece to be learned, so that small increments can be learned and successfully repeated correctly.  As this small detail becomes easy, it becomes integrated into the phrase and then into the larger section or entire piece. By isolating the few notes that are difficult to play and mastering them well, one can then look at the bigger whole.  Sometimes if we have a challenge in life, we must look at the detail and find the element that is troubling us.  By looking at this challenge head on, dividing it into smaller steps, and working at these small elements, the great whole will improve. Going a step further, we ask students in a group class to make comments on what they found was good in a classmate's performance.  While we are able to see the good in others, it is harder to see the good in oneself. This practice allows a student to hear from their peers that their performance had many good qualities.

Dr. Suzuki believed we could educate our children to be good human beings by applying his pedagogic approach to any subject. As parents and adults, we must remember that the end goal is not just the concert, but also the life skills we are learning.

Sachiko Isihara

Executive Director

Suzuki School of Newton