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Suzuki school of violin comes to eastern Loudoun
When 6-year-old Samantha Mahlmann picks up her violin, rests it beneath her chin and begins to play, the process is almost second nature.
The notes and fingerings of the instrument come naturally, and as she plays, she sings the song inside her mind.
She also tells a story through her motions. As the bow glides across the strings of her tiny child-size violin, she is performing more than just a piece of music.
"There's a difference between playing a story inside and outside," said her instructor, Mariam Gregorian. "The No. 1 thing is learning how to be expressive and acting out what you want the audience to feel."
Samantha is a student of the Herndon Suzuki School, which recently relocated to Belmont Ridge in eastern Loudoun County and is currently in search of a new name.
Husband and wife team David Strom and Mariam Gregorian started the school four years ago. They teach using the Suzuki pedagogy, through which they both learned to play more than 20 years ago as young children.
Strom started as a 3-year-old and said he doesn't even remember the first years of learning to play.
The violin is like a language he has always known how to speak, he said.
And for the kids he and his wife teach through the Suzuki method, it is the same.
"The style works really well for young children," said Samantha's mother, Jennifer Mahlmann, of Ashburn. "It's like language learning. You hear it constantly, and you learn it."
Samantha has been taking lessons for almost a year.
"People have all kinds of notions about what it means to take violin lessons," Strom said. "With Suzuki, we look at it that the violin is a gateway to higher levels of sensitivity and compassion. We hold these kids to a very high standard of excellence, and in the process they're growing many dimensions of their character."
The Suzuki method was created in the mid-20th century by Japanese violinist Shin'ichi Suzuki.
Strom said it has revolutionized teaching.
Instead of assuming that some people have talent and some do not, Suzuki teaches that all children are a product of their environment and can learn music just as naturally as they learned their native language.
Those enrolled in lessons listen to a CD of violin music at home and are constantly surrounded by it, Strom said.
"It becomes a language," he said. "They hear it. They play it."
Students of Suzuki usually start at age 3 or 4, and their parents must also be involved and help the students practice every day.
Samantha, who began at 5, is learning to listen to a song or sing it out loud and then play it on the violin, even when she has never practiced it before.
Children start off this way learning by ear, Strom said, and as they become older, they are taught to read music and can play from what they see.
Another part of Suzuki is positive reinforcement.
"It is never fixing, it is always adding and building on top of something," he said.
Strom said this reminds him of one of his favorite quotes by Suzuki:
"Where love is deep, much more can be accomplished."
Strom and his wife currently teach 24 students from age 3 up to teens.
They meet a few times a month in Sterling for group lessons, and each student comes to a private lesson in Belmont Ridge once a week.
Another of Gregorian's students, Sarah, 6, who did not want her last name used, has been taking lessons for three years.
"I really treasure the process," said her mother, Izumi. "I see her frustrated and how she deals with it, and then I see her patient. She's learning something beyond the violin. It's like she's learning life."
Contact the reporter at ecoe@timespapers.com
The e-mail address listed for the school is incorrect. The correct e-mail address is mariamgregorian@yahoo.com.
Posted by mariamgregorian
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