Welcome to our 2024 Spring Suzuki Play-In

Sunday, May 26th 2pm

This Year’s play-in is sponsored and hosted jointly by the Arbutus Music Academy and the Vancouver Suzuki Centre. We are excited to play our music together and collaborate to enrich the wider Suzuki Community in Vancouver.

This concert is intended as a community building, open invitation event for all teachers and students of the Suzuki repertoire. Please contact us if you plan to attend and let us know your repertoire level so that we can look out for you and make it an enjoyable experience for everyone.

Location: Mel Lehan Hall at St. James Community Square 3214 W. 10th Vancouver

Arrival and tuning: 1:40pm

Concert start: 2pm

Dress Code: White tops and black bottoms. If you don’t have a black and white outfit then just something better than your everyday street clothes.

The format for the concert is a traditional play-in starting with more advanced repertoire and ending with Twinkle. As pieces are announced there will be time for students to join the stage.  The program will have a few individual group performances. Those who don't play those numbers may sit where they are on the stage while the group performs.

Violin Repertoire list for the Concert:

  • Bach Concerto for 2 Violins in D- 1st Mvt.

  • Seitz G major 3rd Mvt (1st in Book 4)

  • Bach Bourrée

  • Martini Gavotte

  • Lully Gavotte

  • Handel Bourrée

  • The Two Grenadiers C. M. von Weber

  • Minuet 2 J. S. Bach

  • Andantino S. Suzuki

  • Long Long Ago (A major Book 1)

  • On Come Little Children

  • Twinkle Variation A and theme

    Please play all repeats.

A New Canadian Organization

After years of discussion and work by several Canadian teachers and volunteer committees, Canadian Suzuki teachers are forming a national organization that works with the SAA (Suzuki Association of the Americas) to better serve our needs given the geographic challenges of a country like Canada. This has been done in other countries in North and South America to help focus on regional goals that are best articulated by the teachers in that country. The aim is to bring Canadian teachers together, create opportunities for students at workshops and events, to coordinate access to teacher development courses, translate materials into french, etc. The new national organization for Canadian Suzuki Method teachers is called Suzuki Music / Musique Canada (SM/MC) and it is now a national registered non-profit society.

The website can be found at https://www.suzukimusiccanada.org/

An article as it appeared in the Canadian Suzuki Newsletter Vol. 5 No. 1, Winter 2023:
Concert Honouring Rosalind O’Keefe and 50 years of the Suzuki Method in Vancouver

by Mark Luchkow (BC)

In Vancouver, on May 29th, 2022, approximately five dozen Suzuki violin and cello students, along with their teachers and families, gathered for a grand concert to honour the career of Suzuki violin teacher trainer Rosalind O’Keefe and to celebrate more than fifty years of the Suzuki Method. Rosalind was delighted to attend the concert with her daughter Juliet and was presented with flowers by some former students. For the youngest performers who began their studies just before or after the appearance of COVID-19, this was their first live musical performance. The atmosphere at the concert was magical and underscored for everyone the importance of public performances to musical study.

Rosalind was introduced to the Suzuki Method when she went to Edmonton to visit Thomas Rolston, a former colleague of Rosalind at the Royal Academy of Music. There Rosalind observed Yasuko Eastman teaching the young children. Back in Vancouver in 1970, Rosalind and Marian Schreiber set up a Suzuki program at what was then called the Community Music School of Greater Vancouver, later the Vancouver Academy of Music. She has appeared as a guest teacher at workshops in Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Montana, Oregon, Texas, Washington and, in Canada, the Langley Community Music School and the Okanagan Summer School of the Arts. Rosalind retired from teaching in 2021, but the pandemic pre-empted any events to recognize her five decades of teaching and mentoring.

The concert was organized by The Vancouver Suzuki Centre, which is a collaboration of several teachers combining their students to offer Suzuki group classes. Teachers and students from several schools and studios in Vancouver also participated, including the Arbutus Academy of Music and the VSO School of Music. We hope to expand and continue the tradition of having one or two concerts a year that invite and include Vancouver’s citywide Suzuki community. Our spring concert will be held on May 28th in Mel Lehan Hall. Contact nickistieda@gmail.com or markluchkow@fastmail.com for more information.