Michael's Recital

  Here they are - Mrs Loyd's and daughter's Suzuki students for a delightful recital. Taking a year-long break while in Lausanne, Michael's reentry in music lessons was initially challenging,

but completely nailed his solo pieces - a slight, knowing smile emerges:

Beacon Hill was well-represented with Aiden, Jonathan, Geneva, and Raymond - Bravo! - and teachers, Elle, Selena, & Danielle and supportive friends in the 

audience.

Seeing these children mature over the years, find their voices and come into their own, has been very satisfying. Behind nearly everyone stands a taskmaster mother.

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The Suzuki method is a linguistic influenced pedagogy known for fidelity to sound - hours spent listening to original pieces - and imitation, reading emphasized much later. Usually known for strictness, the method's original, humanistic vision was to enrich the lives of Japanese children in the dire context of the postwar, replacing cultural devastation with music.

One of the main translators of Shinichi Suzuki happened to be Kyoko Selden, an instructor of mine in grad school, who died earlier this year. She was an extraordinarily gifted linguist of classical Chinese & Japanese, as well as Greek and Latin; not even counting a host of modern European languages. 

She also cooked a mean salmon for Thanksgiving, inviting students to their home filled with literature, art, music and Maoist sentiment from her husband, Mark. She was a tremendously devoted mentor, focusing upon translation work from her students, as she helped me read the poetics of Hagiwara Sakutaro, a TS Eliot-like figure of modernist poetry and criticism.  

With Beacon Hill and Suzuki music, we are increasingly aware how critically dependent the virtues of truth, goodness, and beauty are on having excellent teachers.

Grandparents' Day

Inspired by classical pedagogies, history facts & grammar rules are gestured & sung. Children have remarkable capacities for jingles, and links between knowledge and the body have gained ground. The more anchors, the better, we figure.A beautiful reception, hosting a breakfast honoring grandparents is one of the oldest & perhaps most beloved of BHCA traditions.

Carolyn and Elle staged an art exhibition of the year's portfolio, turning the classroom into a gallery. C introduced the various projects.

Mr Smith's class constructed models of the tabernacle, emphasizing the directional vectors - east/west, up/down - mirrored in the ascending hierarchy of precious metals used, orientation of the tent, as well as earlier Genesis accounts of where the rivers flowed.

Jack's class made family trees; he insisted on including last names.

Art projects, like this,

and this

and this - Michael's gorgeous pastel, echoing his mother's color scheme (see above photo) for dress and, in the process, unintentionally underscoring the link between fashion and art in the modern. Someday, he'll also learn the grim relation between fashion/art and politics, coming to fruition in the Third Reich.  

But that's another story.