– Director’s Notes: September 2020 –
Dear friends of Music,
Summer greetings from Fruitdale Farm! I hope you’re all really enjoying this gorgeous weather!
We are finding it a little challenging to plan for our fall musical activities with the shutdowns still in place for Phase 2. I am beginning to do online zoom classes and rehearsals for Mount Baker Youth Symphony and Fidalgo Youth Symphony. See above for the schedules. Because Mount Baker Youth Symphony is smaller I will include woodwinds and brass in the rehearsals for Monday nights as needed. However on Thursdays I will just be doing Violins and Violas for September, and in October I’m going to set up woodwind and brass online rehearsals through the zoom meeting format. It will be fun and innovative!
We will prepare music for upcoming concerts in a format similar to master classes where the teacher will play and then students will answer with the same phrase, either one at a time or together if we can figure out the time lapses. In any case it will keep everyone working hard on their techniques and when we resume our joint practicing at our normal locations, your advancements and the musical quality will be even better, and thus more exciting! No registration for the Youth Symphonies is needed at this point. We will wait until we can enter our church locations, and then we could have official registrations. What I would like from you now is one check per month of $32 to cover the cost of the instruction for the Zoom sectionals and rehearsals (or you can pay me directly on Venmo – just use this email: sharynpeterson@hotmail.com)
I am eager to hear you play! Please keep up your private lessons with serious diligence in your practicing. Zoom recital for Sharyn Peterson will be on September 26 at 2 PM in the afternoon. I will send out a link to all of my private students. If anyone else wants to listen in let me know and I’ll send you the link.
With joy in music making,
Peterson Conservatory Director,
Sharyn Peterson
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P.S. A big heartfelt thank you to all of the friends who have brought food, sent cards, and even visited Malcolm after his open heart surgery two weeks ago. He is slowly recovering and happy to be here! He sends his grateful thanks to each of you.
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– Director’s Notes: June 2020 –
Dear friends of Music,
We apologize for the lack of performance opportunities for our students! Right now it’s a little bit difficult to know what would be allowed as far as groups performing in public. So we are concentrating on maintaining and improving skills through online lessons, and signing up new students to register for in person and online lessons in September. We plan to do some chamber music workshops in the late summer, but of course that depends on what phase of the Covid recovery is in operation at the time, so stay tuned. Students please let me know if you were interested in joining a chamber ensemble workshop and performance this summer. Then we can have our plans ready as soon as we are given the go ahead. I am so looking forward to actually working with you in person after this long stay-at-home time.
A word about the protests happening all over the country and the world: we at Peterson Conservatory are in heartfelt sympathy with the peaceful protesters. We lament the damage to personal property, and we pray for improved social and cultural outcomes in the near future!
Warm regards,
Sharyn Peterson
Artistic/Executive Director
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– Director’s Notes: May 2020 –
After the governor’s announcements Friday, it seems we will have to increase our level of creativity and productivity in order to stay engaged in musical pursuits at home during the month of May. Although disappointed, we are holding steady with online lessons and coaching sessions, and looking forward to in person lessons as soon as possible!
Music is essential in mysterious, intangible ways! For brain development, motor skills, emotional expression, and collective and personal artistic achievement! I am trusting you each to increase creativity and purpose in your lives, as we move from Spring into our Northwest summer, with so many changes and challenges! I hope you enjoy the quotes below as much as I do!
Your Director,
Sharyn Peterson
“Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without.”
― Confucius, The Book of Rites
“My heart, which is so full to overflowing, has often been solaced and refreshed by music when sick and weary.”
― Martin Luther
“Music is an outburst of the soul.”
― Frederick Delius
“Life seems to go on without effort when I am filled with music.”
― George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss“
“Music is the divine way to tell beautiful, poetic things to the heart.”
― Pablo Casals
“Music is the moonlight in the gloomy night of life.”
― Jean Paul Friedrich Richter
“Inspiration is a guest that does not willingly visit the lazy.”
― Piotr Tchaikovsky
“The job of art is to chase ugliness away.”
― Bono
“Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.”
― Henry Van Dyke
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