Kingsbury Strings

Japanese violinist Shinichi Suzuki is the creator of the Suzuki violin method.  Suzuki is quoted as saying, "I want to make good citizens. If a child hears fine music from the day of his birth and learns to play it himself, he develops sensitivity, discipline and endurance. He gets a beautiful heart."

More than forty years ago, Suzuki realized the implications of the fact that children the world over learn to speak their native language with ease. He began to apply the basic principles of language acquisition to the learning of music, and called his method the mother-tongue approach. The ideas of parent responsibility, loving encouragement and constant repetition and review are some of the special features of the Suzuki approach.

Shawn Verfaillie is a proud member of the Suzuki Association of the Americas.  Click here for more information.

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The central belief of Suzuki is that all people can learn from their environments. A main focus of his method is the desire to create the "right environment" for learning music, an environment that will also help form excellent character in the music student. Main components of this theory include:

- Saturation in the musical  community
- Friendship with other music students
- Listening to music performed by professional classical musicians of high caliber, ideally in the home every day
- Being surrounded with a musical environment from infancy
- Emphasis on playing from a very young age, between the ages of 3 and 5 years old
- Using well trained teachers, preferably also trained in the Suzuki philosophy
- Learning music by ear in the beginning
- Memorization of all solo pieces
- Regular playing in groups
- Retaining and reviewing every piece of music ever learned on a regular basis
- Frequent public performance, so that performing is natural and enjoyable                                                    - The development of musicianship