This morning Vif had the opportunity to give a short performance at the Suzuki Charter School here in Edmonton. It goes on the record as the second earliest Vif performance (the earliest was getting up for a 7:00 Breakfast Television spot for Mercury Opera’s 104 Underground – no easy feat for musicians).
The students at the school are studying music from the Romantic era this year, so we chose a program of selections from string quartets by Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn, and Brahms. Typically, when children are at concerts, they listen, but they may also be tempted to fidget, sing, talk, dance, and a number of other creative distractions. I can certainly understand this to a point – most kids aren’t used to sitting quietly for upwards of half an hour at a time at a classical music concert. The students at the Suzuki School, however, were angels! I don’t think I heard a peep from these kindergarteners to grade 6-ers. You can tell they all are musicians themselves and have been trained in audience etiquette.
It was also neat for us to play at the Suzuki Charter School because all four of us in the quartet have connections to the school, whether from attending it ourselves many years ago, or currently teaching private and group classes there and at the affiliated Society for Talent Education.
vif string quartet 