The Late Starters Orchestra

by Ari L. Goldman

  Works by Mozart, Mahler, and a contemporary composer named Thomas Adès were on the program. No one on stage budged when Alan Gilbert, the Philharmonic’s youthful music director, appeared—at a proper performance all the musicians would stand—but the audience gave Gilbert a warm round of applause. Gilbert took a short bow and then acted as if we in the audience weren’t there. He stopped the orchestra when he felt it necessary and had them repeat passages that he was unhappy with. Sometimes he’d sing a few measures out loud to demonstrate what he was looking for. Gilbert, who took over the orchestra in 2009 at the age of forty-two, seemed decidedly at home. But that was no wonder since both his mother and father had careers as violinists with the Philharmonic. (His father, Michael Gilbert, retired in 2001, and his mother, Yoko Takebe, continues to perform with the orchestra.)

  I was hoping to connect with Milt and his wife at the open rehearsal that morning, but we didn’t manage to meet. Aside from the mornings at Lincoln Center, Milt told me that he practices his violin every day and takes a lesson once a week with his teacher. He plays with the Downtown Symphony one night and with a chamber music group for seniors at the Mannes College one morning a week. “Truth is, I’m not all that good,” he lamented that night we met on the train. “I wish I knew what I forgot. My fingers aren’t that quick. But everyone tolerates me. And I love it.”

  When we reached his stop near Lincoln Center, he said, “Hope I see you again next week, Ari. Good luck with the music.”

  As it turned out, the Downtown Symphony was not the right fit for me. It met on Tuesday nights, which meant I was out of commission on the home front. That wasn’t really fair to Shira, whose public relations business, which she ran alone, seemed to take more and more of her time, often into the evenings. There were dinners to prepare and Judah’s homework—and cello playing—to supervise. But it was more than just a question of timing. The music was a real leap for me. It was well beyond what we were playing at LSO, where we were more likely to tackle four-part arrangements of chamber music than full-blown symphonies. I felt foolish after begging Doug for a place at the Downtown Symphony, but ultimately he was right. It wasn’t for me. I decided to focus on my own playing and on LSO.

  SUZUKI

  After Judah gave the cello a kiss on the night I first showed it to him, I started asking around about cello teachers. I was advised not to look for a teacher, but for a method: Suzuki.

  Suzuki is an extraordinary system of musical education for youngsters. It is based on the teachings of Shinichi Suzuki, a Japanese educator and violinist who died at the age of ninety-nine in 1998. Suzuki was committed to the idea that a child can learn music the same way that he or she learns language: through immersion, encouragement, repetition, and small steps. It is sometimes called the “mom-centric” method of music education because of the heavy parental involvement necessary to make it work, but dads are also welcome. From the time Judah turned six, I took him each week to a program near Lincoln Center.

  Judah began with an eighth-size cello, an instrument not much bigger than a violin. But instead of holding it under his chin, as a violinist would, Judah’s teacher taught him how to pull out the end pin and place the cello between his legs. Much to my delight, he took to it. The Suzuki method gently introduces the instrument to the child. First the child learns by ear and only later does he or she learn musical notation. The child begins with something familiar—the letters of the alphabet—rather than notes on a musical staff. An early Suzuki piece might look like this: DDAABBA GGFFEED. AABBCCA BBAACCA. That’s “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”

  Judah’s first teacher, a Korean cellist named Sujin, was warm and funny and rewarded him at the end of each lesson with animal stickers on his practice book. She managed to turn everything into a game. Judah played “Twinkle” to death. Who knew there were so many variations, each one with its own rhythm and style but all unmistakably “Twinkle”? She named each one. There was “Ice Cream Twinkle” and “Choo-Choo Twinkle” and “Cha-Cha Twinkle.” After mastering the “Twinkle” repertoire, Judah graduated to songs like “Go Tell Aunt Rhody,” “French Folk Song,” “The Happy Farmer,” and even a simple minuet or two by Bach.

  I happily sat through lessons and practiced each night with Judah. He was in first grade when we began and was just getting into the rhythm of nightly homework. Cello practice became part of his nightly routine—and mine. Just ten minutes in the beginning, but then fifteen and even twenty as he moved up through the grades. It was never onerous; always fun. Playing music became as natural as dinner, homework, and bedtime.

  The Suzuki books start easy but quickly accelerate to more challenging material. By the end of Book 1, which is mostly made up of familiar folk songs, the young cellist is playing a minuet from a manuscript known as the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach, presented by the composer to his second wife. The notebooks provide a glimpse into the domestic music of the eighteenth century, a time when, if you wanted music in your life, you had to create it. It was exhilarating to know that the same music being played in Bach’s house was being played in ours.

  By the second Suzuki book, children have left folk songs and family dances behind and are playing Mozart, Handel, and Schumann. Successive books become more demanding in terms of bowing, speed, and position. By Book 4, the young cellist gets to play selections from the Bach suites that Pablo Casals made famous. From there, the repertoire is vast and accessible. Students are soon playing Beethoven, Dvořák, Tchaikovsky, and Boccherini. In our house, we would make a party with cupcakes and ice cream when Judah finished one of the Suzuki books and moved on to the next.

  When Judah started lessons, I called Mr. J to tell him that there was a new cellist in the family. Mr. J had just turned ninety and I checked in with him every few weeks just to say hello. He was overjoyed to hear about Judah. “How wonderful,” he said. “My musical son has a musical son.” I promised to drive up one day to show him the wonder of Judah playing but I never managed to. One day, a year or so later, I got a call from Andrew that Mr. J had had a massive stroke. Andrew gave me the name of the hospital where he was being cared for in Westchester and I drove there the next day. He told me to prepare myself for a sad sight.

  When I approached Mr. J’s room, I first spotted his beautiful mane of hair, as white and luxuriant as ever. But beneath that hair, I saw a face contorted as if in permanent pain. Hands that once mastered the cello repertoire—and flirted with the gamba—were gnarled and clenched. Mr. J’s eyes were open but it was clear that he did not see, not me, not anything. I sat vigil for the afternoon with Andrew and Angie and Angie’s mother, Ursula. A few weeks later he was gone.

  In the years after Mr. J’s death, several new cello teachers came into my life, some for Judah and others for me, and one for both of us. But even with Mr. J gone, I still heard his voice, sometimes in my head, at other times in my dreams, and at still other times in the music of the cello.

  JUDAH AND I HAD a routine on Tuesday nights. He’d come home from school, have a snack, and then we took the subway from our apartment at Columbia to his lesson on West Sixty-seventh Street. During his third year of Suzuki, though, I had the feeling that Judah was running in place. He was ready for the next level but I wasn’t sure what that was. I began to ask around for a new cello teacher.

  Early one morning while on an errand in my neighborhood, I turned the corner onto Broadway and found myself walking alongside a young woman with a cello on her back. She had curly blond hair and a happy bounce in her step.

  I didn’t want to come across as a weirdo but I had to ask. “Excuse me. Hello? Can I ask you a question?” The woman turned and looked at me suspiciously. “I’m sorry to bother you but do you know a good cello teacher for a nine-year-old boy?” She seemed more than a bit wary of me and of my question. “It’s for my son. He’s nine,” I repeated. She stopped, seemed to size me up, and, I suppose, realized that I was sincere and not just giving her a line. I handed her my business card. She saw that I
was a Columbia professor and then finally spoke.

  “I teach,” she said brightly. “Perhaps we can work something out.”

  Shira, too, was skeptical at first when I told her about how I found the new cello teacher. “So let me get this straight,” she began. “You picked up a chick on the street because she happened to be wearing a cello? Are there no male cellists in Manhattan? Have you been interviewing all of them, too?” I didn’t blame Shira for her caution but I convinced her that this was worth at least one lesson. Shira was sure to be home on the first day the new teacher arrived. Two minutes into the lesson, Shira was won over by this young woman, whose name was Laura. Most important, Judah took an instant liking to her.

  Laura was in a joint undergraduate music program between Columbia and Juilliard but she was as much a cheerleader as a teacher. She came to our apartment on Sunday mornings, worked on Judah’s technique, scales, and music—and inevitably took to her feet and gave him standing ovations for his work, which improved week to week at a rate that we had not seen before. Indeed, this was the next step that he needed.

  Judah was already in his fourth year of cello lessons and had graduated from an eighth-size cello to a quarter-size to a half-size instrument. In the beginning I sat in on every lesson. I needed to know what Judah was learning so I could be sure he’d practice what he needed to learn. Judah and Laura sat in our living room on facing straight-backed chairs, their cellos between them. Laura would demonstrate a technique, a note, or a passage, and Judah would take what he saw and heard and make it his own. I would sit on the couch off to the side and literally feel the good vibrations. Like few other instruments, the cello resonates through the wood and the furniture and warms the body. I loved just sitting there.

  With time I became superfluous. I marveled at the bond that was developing between the teacher and the student. It often reminded me of my relationship with Mr. J. “My dear cello-son Ari,” he wrote to me a year before his death. The salutation came in a note he wrote to me about religion, a topic we often discussed. We had very different approaches to religion. Ritual practice was and is a very important part of my life but not his. In this letter he tried to bridge the gap between us. Through the toil and studies of our instrument, he wrote, we were searching, I think for a “musical religion.” Consider, for example, your Bach Prelude. Behind the simple black dots, which he wrote more than three hundred years ago, we endeavored to find and re-live the miracle of his spiritual and emotional creation.

  Judah’s relationship with his teacher Laura was perhaps less philosophical but equally spiritual and emotional.

  Judah was easy to fall in love with. He is our youngest, separated from his brother by eleven years and his sister by seven years. He relished his junior status in the family, and he was far more compliant than his siblings were at his age. Until he was a teenager, we never got an argument out of him. He listened. He also looked like the baby with his chubby build, curly dirty blond hair, and chipmunk cheeks. While other preteens couldn’t wait to grow up, Judah savored his babydom. He liked the cartoon character Pajama Sam and he was an avid collector of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. He even favored plastic dishes and tiny silverware when he ate.

  I stopped sitting in on the lessons, but I never stopped listening to the music. My favorite moments were when Judah and Laura would play duets, simple pieces like the chorus from Judas Maccabaeus by Handel or the theme from “Witches’ Dance” by Paganini. But even when Laura played along, the focus was on Judah. She’d put down her cello and give him a standing ovation.

  Laura grew up playing the Suzuki method and was trained to teach it. As she was well connected in the Suzuki world, she recommended that we check out the summer Suzuki program in Hartford, Connecticut. We signed up, packed the car with Judah’s half-size cello, and headed for Hartford, which, as it happens, is the city of my birth. Hartford has all sorts of associations for me. Although I moved away from Hartford when my parents divorced, I kept coming back throughout my childhood to spend weekends with my dad, who remained there for most of his life.

  Suzuki camp is just a week long and a parent or other responsible adult is expected to be on hand to supervise. Judah went for four summers and, on our trips to Hartford, I showed Judah the sites: the hospital I was born in, my childhood home, the house where my grand­parents lived, and even the Mark Twain House, Hartford’s national landmark. But perhaps the place that made the greatest impression on him was the Crown Market, the kosher supermarket where we bought deli sandwiches practically every night after Suzuki camp.

  On one trip, I even gave Judah a tour of the synagogues of Hartford, the one we went to (Orthodox) and, of course, the one my family would never step into (the Conservative one). Judah and I caught a service one summer afternoon at the Orthodox Young Israel of West Hartford. A man a few years younger than me approached and asked, “Are you Marvin’s son?” When I said yes, he warmly embraced me. “I thought that was you,” he said. “We met several years ago at your father’s apartment in Jerusalem. I was visiting Israel with my family and we shared a meal with you at his apartment.”

  The man’s name was Stan and I had only the vaguest memory of meeting him in Israel. My father, who worked in real estate, had retired with his second wife to Jerusalem at the age of seventy. He lived out his remaining years there and died peacefully in Jerusalem at the age of seventy-seven.

  “Your dad played a very important role in my life,” Stan was saying. He told me how, as a boy of fourteen, he became attracted to greater Jewish observance and began to go to synagogue, often alone. My father, too, was sitting alone and soon they struck up a friendship. “We used to sit together every Shabbos,” Stan said. “He became my mentor and advisor.” Over the years, Stan became more involved Jewishly and aspired to go to Yeshiva University, which was the school of the men of my family (both my father and I went there, as did numerous uncles, both on my mother’s side and on my father’s side). My father saw Stan through the admissions process to Yeshiva and even secured financial aid for his first year of college, when Stan’s parents balked at paying. Later, my father helped him and his wife purchase their first house in Hartford. “He held our hands throughout the process, guiding us and giving us confidence with every step,” Stan said.

  I had mixed emotions about all this. On the one hand, I was proud that my father was such a strong mentor. On the other, I was envious. In my teens I was living in New York with my mother and often sat alone in synagogue. My dad was not very much involved with my college education and was certainly not there when I bought my first house (which turned out to be a big financial mistake).

  I remembered how Andrew had told me that Mr. J was a “terrible father” and how that was corroborated by events such as his leaving his family behind in Guatemala and his tolerance of his second wife’s poor treatment of Andrew. Yet I idolized Mr. J and considered him not just my teacher, but my “musical father.”

  Perhaps, I mused, that is the nature of fathers and sons. As fathers we do our best to encourage and nurture and support. It is, however, an impossible job and, inevitably, we come up short. There isn’t a child without complaint. There isn’t a father without regrets.

  Often, we fathers find, there’s someone who does it better: a teacher, a friend, a mentor. Maybe not everything better, but some things, perhaps just enough to highlight our inadequacies. I suppose fathers have to be thankful for that someone else. These thoughts were rattling around my head as I traveled through Hartford with Judah for those four summers. I was hoping to be both a father and a mentor to him and yet wondering how well I would succeed at either.

  THE SUMMER SUZUKI PROGRAM is housed at the Hartt School at the University of Hartford. The first summer that we went, Judah was in something called pre-orchestra, in which children learned where to sit (cellos to the right, violins to the left), how to stand when the conductor enters (in unison), how to be recognized if you have a question (raise your bow), and how to applaud with a bow in your hand (by
stomping your feet). Playing music with other children was a new experience for him. Suzuki has a great parent-teacher support system but this was our first exposure to a broader musical world for children. It is one thing to hear your child play “Cha-Cha Twinkle” but to hear fifty little kids play it! That’s a community dedicated to making music.

  Judah made friends and also discovered more teachers who made learning fun. By his second summer at the Suzuki camp, Judah left pre-orchestra behind and was in a real youth orchestra. The conductor was a delightful educator named Dominic, a small man with a prominent mustache, bushy eyebrows, and just the right touch with kids. “Who knows vibrato?” he asked. Vibrato is the musical effect that a string player achieves by pulsating the left hand to produce slight and rapid variations in pitch. Again, I think of Mr. J. Although he often spoke in transcendent terms about voice, body, and mind, when it came to vibrato, he was much more down to earth. Vibrato comes from the hand. There is nothing magical here. This is a mechanical function of the hand. If it is hard, it is because we are not used to it, but the hand can be taught.

  Vibrato is a technique that takes some time to develop and separates the more advanced student from the beginner. In one lovely children’s book that Judah and I read, The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt by Patricia MacLachlan, the main character, a technically excellent cellist, awaits the coming of her vibrato the way most girls await their first period. Vibrato means you’ve come of age.

  As Dominic asked the question to the Suzuki group, a few of the young musicians raised their bows, signaling that they had crossed the divide and knew vibrato. Judah was not there yet. Dominic seemed to be separating the haves from the have-nots, and I felt a pang of sorrow for my son and wondered if he felt it, too. But then Dominic burst the bubble with this instruction: “Good. Do it. Vibrato doesn’t do anything but it looks good!”