Our guest blogger Ashley Liberty teaches violin at Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart in Miami, Florida in addition to maintaining an impressive performance career in which she's been Concertmaster for the Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra and performed alongside Bruce Hornsby, Andrea Bocelli, Bernadette Peters, Steve Miller, and Ricky Scaggs. Ashley makes a convincing case for using the O'Connor method: she firmly believes that the benefits of teaching American music with lyrics and a rich historical context outweigh any of its challenges.

I began my journey with the O’Connor Method after attending the O’Connor String Camp as a professional classical violinist looking to develop my abilities in other styles. I was introduced to the method there, and I decided to pursue training. Early on, I became a believer with an urgent desire to completely devote myself to teaching the O'Connor Violin Method to my beginning students, especially after attending the certification class with the method’s inspiring editor, Pamela Wiley. Since adopting the method as my curriculum with my 250 school violinists, and with all of my beginning to intermediate-level private students, I have been very satisfied with the results, and often completely surprised.

It is graduation season! Many high school musicians are now preparing to move on to college to study music and many music majors are now entering the workforce. To all of these new grads: CONGRATULATIONS! And, to ask the question that many people are probably asking you, “What are you going to do with a music degree?”

SHAR Music is proud to announce the winners of its third annual Quartet Competition!

As a SHAR Apprentice I have the great pleasure of being able to perform at local schools as part of the Apprentice Ensemble’s outreach program. This past week, two colleagues and I were privileged to perform back-to-back mini-concerts for six classes of some of Detroit’s fifth- and sixth-graders. The three of us from SHAR certainly had fun playing together, but our high string trio arrangements of the Star Wars theme or parts of Carmen were not what made this snowy day so delightful.  Rather, we found ourselves choking back laughter as these kids responded to our performances with the spontaneity and unpredictability that has ceased to color most adult interactions. And, as restless and noisy as these classes were, not a single bright eye seemed any less interested in the music for all of the chaos.

Music and arts education programs matter because they engage the bizarre and beautiful creativity of Generation Y.

So, I've been thinking about education recently. Entries on the joys and trials of being a Suzuki Mom have flooded my inbox (send more!), and my colleague Alberta, a fine violinist and writer here at SHAR, just posted an entry last week on the sacrifices and payoffs of studying and playing the violin.

The entries on this blog, however, aren't reflective of the dominant opinion on most school boards. No surprise there. Arts education can't really compete with the sciences, and I'm not sure if they've ever been able to compete. Certainly these days most of the rhetoric from President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan has centered on the sciences. When Obama and Duncan talk about our test scores dropping behind Scandanavian countries or China, it's usually in the sciences. Administrators value reading, but not reading as a way to make art: more so, they care about reading skills because the savvy use of language is necessary to get ahead.

Playing a string instrument is a tremendous investment for both the student and the teacher. Money, time, energy ... so is it worth it? Based on my own experience, I believe that this sacrifice is one that reaps endless rewards.

Though much of the rhetoric about American schools has been focused on math and science, test scores, and the growing gap between the quality of education in the United States and other first-world nations, the value of the arts and humanities in education is receiving national recognition during the month of October. Perhaps this recognition shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. Many economists such as Edward Glaeser (check out his recent book Triumph of the City) are beginning to recognize the value of creativity in our future economies; the development of our creative sides, through music and the visual arts, could be an asset (gasp!) instead of a hindrance. Huzzah for the economy of the future and for October.

John Kendall, who brought the Suzuki Method to the US in the 1950s, has passed away at 93. He had lived in Ann Arbor for the past several years, following his son here, Christopher Kendall, dean of the school of music at U of M.