Suzuki Shines In My Heart

 Back in 1966 when the Suzuki Method was being introduced in the US my parents were interested in having their kids have a musical foundation so they enrolled me and my brother in one of the first programs available, at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY.  For the next several years we were there once or twice a week for private and group lessons with a handful of other students and we learned our Twinkle Twinkles and marched around the room clapping rhythms and sat in on each other’s lessons.  We memorized all of our music by ear and could sing and feel all the songs deeply inside of ourselves.  To this day I do that and lose many hours of sleep at night hearing and learning music in my head, heart and fingers.  I am thankful (and often sleepy) for this ability.

   One time in the late 1960’s Dr. Suzuki came to Rochester.  My parents offered to have a gathering at our house for him, and it was also his birthday.  So right then and there at age 7 or 8 I had met him, probably had a class with him that day but I don’t remember that, and loads of Japanese adults and children were in my home.  Ten years later when I was a JYA student in Japan for a year I learned of a Suzuki concert happening so I somehow found a way to contact Dr. Suzuki.  In my low-level Japanese I composed a letter to him about having met him as a child and being interested in attending the concert and he responded with a couple of tickets to the concert.  I went and the seats were right next to him and three rows behind then Prime Minister Ohira!  I was thrilled of course, and I soaked up the music and the sight of hundreds of Japanese children lined up in rows playing all the songs I knew so well.