10 European Suzuki Viola Gathering 2024 Laura Keuzenkamp 15 – 17 November 2024 De Beukenhof, The Netherlands I n the beautiful old monastery ‘De Beukenhof’ in The Netherlands about 50 children with their families and 25 Teachers gathered together for a weekend filled with playing the instrument that binds them all together: the Viola! All weekend long you could hear in every corner of the monastery the warm, touching, lively and vibrant sound of our favourite instrument. The Viola Gathering is a special event where Violists from all over Europe, Canada and the United States come together to share their love for this beautiful instrument. For both the children and Teachers this Viola Gathering is very unique, no other Suzuki workshop has such a big share of Violist participation. This event is known for its contribution to the Viola community; it’s the place where Viola families and Viola Teachers can meet each other in big groups and share their love, knowledge, skill, motivation and ideas. During the weekend one could really feel that the philosophy was present in all corners of the building; parents, students, Teachers and even the staff of the venue were all working together to make an ideal little world and everyone contributed to making others grow in their own way. It’s our goal to make the Suzuki Viola community grow and give students, parents and Teachers the opportunity to share and feel the love that they and others carry out for this beautiful instrument. Every day was filled with group lessons, orchestra rehearsals and other activities where Suzuki Viola Teachers voluntarily shared all they know about the Viola with the children and parents, and with each other. It’s very unique to have big groups of Violists together to teach, to play together with and to listen to; this develops our Viola sound to a higher level (or deeper level if you wish). Even for non-reading students an orchestra lesson was provided, where they could get a taste of playing together in multiple voices instead of playing in unison like they mostly had done before. Next to that, the Viola Gathering is a great event to learn about all the possibilities of the Viola playing different styles of music, from Classical to Popular, from Baroque to Modern, from intensely slow to ecstatically fast… There were also three round-table sessions scheduled, from which the third one was new and quite unique: one for parents, one for Teachers and one for children. The one for parents and teachers was to meet and discuss different kind of topics such as practice, dealing with multi-level groups, developing programs and philosophy. For the children we found a small group of teenagers who were willing to play games with the younger children in order to bond and to get to know each other a bit better. This last version of a round-table was very new for us, but from what I heard, the children insist on having another one at the next Viola Gathering! This 4th Viola Gathering in The Netherlands was a special one, cofounders from the very beginning, Joanne Martin and Peter King, announced their retirement from the organization and were extensively thanked during the final concert with presents and speeches. In the future we will continue to organize other Viola Gatherings in different European countries and we hope the Suzuki Viola community will get bigger and stronger than ever.
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