Quartet inspires young to take up instruments
In front of them stood four members of the nationally renowned Marian Anderson String Quartet, who returned to Seattle this week to work with them and their classmates at Seattle's T.T. Minor Elementary.
Two years ago, many of these students hadn't thought about playing an instrument like a violin. Most hadn't heard of a viola, or the big, deep-voiced cello that Prudence McDaniel cradled as she played an "A" note to tune by.
But that was before their principal, Gloria Mitchell, looked inside a cabinet and found about a dozen violins that no one had used for at least a decade. It was before the school got a grant to cover the costs of an instructor, and to buy more violins.
Most important, it was before the Marian Anderson quartet's first visit to the school in 2002, when it amazed students with the wonderful, powerful sounds that can be coaxed from wood, strings and horsehair.
Mitchell, seeing how impressed students were, decided every fourth-grader would take violin lessons at school. No student objected.
"It just sounded so amazing," said Taylor Kinsey-Brown, 10, who earlier had kept her eyes on her bow as she practiced the two songs her fifth-grade group was to play with the quartet at a school concert yesterday.
After the students lined up, the quartet members quickly helped them tune their instruments, adjust their posture and hold their bows properly.
McDaniel and her colleagues — violinists Marianne Henry and Nicole Cherry and violist Diedra Lawrence — ran the class like a professional studio, expecting students to act accordingly. Feet together. Violins held correctly.
Nonverbal cues, like when to start, were followed with precision.
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The sound, which already filled the room, seemed to grow by a hundred layers. Stiff with concentration, the students worked hard to play clear notes — no squeaks.
At the end, Henry, the first violinist, said: "I have to ask: How many people are in pain?"
All the students' arms ached.
"We'll cut it so it's not so long," she promised.
The quartet members know what the students are feeling. They remember squeaking out their first notes. And Henry and Lawrence started playing after a musician visited their school.
Lawrence was 15 when she first heard the viola, and it hit her hard.
"I have got to have this sound in my life," she recalls thinking. "In large quantities."
The Marian Anderson String Quartet started a decade ago. It is the first African-American ensemble in history to win a classical-music competition, and devotes itself to "do for classical music what Jackie Robinson did for baseball."
The quartet will perform in Meany Hall at the University of Washington on Monday night.
As part of the education program sponsored by UW World Series at Meany and the Ladies Musical Club of Seattle, the quartet spent four days at T.T. Minor this week. It will visit several other schools next week.
The quartet members wanted to come back to T.T. Minor after hearing what their first visit inspired. They spent time this week with the fifth-graders who started playing last year, and also with the fourth-graders who are just beginning.
Before taking up the violin, Taylor Kinsey-Brown said she had played the ukulele — once. Ja'Wan Harris, 10, said he'd played the guitar and trumpet, but proclaimed the violin better because of its soft sounds.
Nia Wilson said playing soothes her when she's having a bad day.
"It just helps me get my feelings out," she said.
Mitchell, the school principal, said she'd never think about leaving the arts out of the curriculum because they are as important as literacy and math.
"My bottom-line belief is: If we take away the creative part from our kids, we're only teaching one-half or one-third of them," Mitchell said.
T.T. Minor received outside grants to pay for instrumental-music instruction. The school also has an after-school marching band and a choir.
Among the quartet's instruments, the cello was the biggest hit among students.
They stopped McDaniel wherever she went. They wanted to touch the cello, play it. Two asked if they could buy it, but quickly figured out it would take at least five years of mowing lawns to afford even a student model.
As the quartet's fourth-grade lesson wound down, McDaniel graciously let a few students sit down, play a few notes and feel how much the instrument vibrates. Other students crowded around to watch.
"When will you be back?" one student asked McDaniel. "Next year?" he added hopefully.
"Probably in two," she said.
"Two?" he asked, disappointed. "I'll be in sixth grade."
"Don't sweat it," she said. "We go to middle schools, too."
Linda Shaw: 206-464-2359 or lshaw@seattletimes.com
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