Six students from the Sunshine Coast Youth Orchestra (SCYO) are assembled on a recent Saturday afternoon for a music workshop at St. John’s United Church offered by the Rolston String Quartet (RSQ). These are the visiting musicians who are performing at a concert in Sechelt for the Coast Recital Society.
The students are around high school age, and the four members of the RSQ are not much older themselves. Coast music teacher Kathleen Hovey introduces them to the kids. They are Luri Lee, violin; Jeffrey Dyrda, violin; Hezekiah Leung, viola; and Jonathan Lo, cello. The difference between the quartet and the students is that the four have become consummate, award-winning musicians and are quartet-in-residence at the prestigious Yale School of Music.
They have a lot to teach and as the SCYO (with Hovey on viola and Sarah Poon on cello), kicks off with the lively and familiar Vivaldi’s Inverno, the quartet members listen carefully.
“Play that a little closer to the chest,” suggests Jeff Dyrda, and he demonstrates how to bring out the melody on the cello. The orchestra does a great job to my untrained ear, but there’s always more polish needed.
Luri Lee steps up to show how it’s done. “Be a little bit more crazy,” she advises and launches into a wild and fast violin solo that leaves the listeners breathless. The students look slightly intimidated, but they pick up the pace.
After the orchestra performs, two students, Hannah Lerson and Maya Somogyi, stay behind to play more Vivaldi and to do a two-on-two tuition session with the visiting musicians, accompanied by Carolyn Mitchell on the piano. Elsewhere in the building other students are receiving private lessons, concentrating on soaking up as much musical knowledge as they can in one afternoon.
“This is so valuable for them,” says Hovey, who knows the capabilities of all the students. It’s time to dispel the rumour that Hovey has retired. She is as busy as ever with her teaching and hosting training workshops like this one, so much so that she had to give over the Youth Orchestra into the capable hands of Sarah Poon.
The workshop is part of the Coast Recital Society’s outreach program, in which musicians who perform in the concert series also perform in schools and eldercare residences on the Sunshine Coast, along with offering master classes to gifted music students.
Find out more at www.coastrecitalsociety.ca
