STEP

Hi everybody!

Now that we are gearing up for another Suzuki year, it's nice to look back and consider our achievements, and what we have built. What a year we've had! From the STEP Alumni concert last November, through to the final Group Concert, it's been an amazing year of fabulous music.

I looked around the other day and realized that I am the only teacher who has been on staff since the program was incorporated in 1982. For 26 years now, I have watched as STEP, in its quiet and unassuming way, has nurtured string players in St. John's - providing fine players for the Youth Orchestra, the Symphony, and the Music School, and inculcating compassion, empathy, and a love of beauty in our children according to Suzuki Sensei's philosophy. We've always been a kind of "home-grown" or "grass-roots" organization, everyone pitching in to help in order to run the organization and keep costs down. We have been, and are, a community; dedicated to helping each other, with the best interests of the children in our hearts. We have always been inclusive, reaching out to others in the wider musical community - including them in our orchestras, our parent classes, and our fiddle groups.

Artistically, our program is as strong as it has ever been - the quality of playing in our Final Concert was tremendous! With your help, our team of dedicated teachers are getting the best out of your kids, with liberal doses of love, humour and hard work. From the pre-twinklers right up to our most advanced group class, (the Young Virtuosi) everyone is playing with good tone, good posture, and good attitude! From a historical *and* a musical perspective, we are a stronger program than we have been in years, because we now have a solid group of advanced students. I have observed over the past 26 years that the health of our program (and the other programs I have visited in Canada, the States, England and Japan) depends not just on good teaching and supportive parents; it depends upon the quality of the environment which we provide for the kids. An enormous part of this environment is provided by our advanced students - it is they who inspire us all - parents, teachers and younger students - to believe that all the hard work is worth it. So it behooves us to appreciate our advanced class, and provide a good and inspiring environment for *them* as well.

Since 1982 many other organizations have grown up around us - the Youth Symphony, the Youth Symphony Choir (Shallaway), Kittiwake Dance Theatre, Music for Young Children, and Kindermusic, to name but a few. These organizations all have a much higher profile than we have. In a very Japanese fashion, we seem, as a program, unwilling to boast about who we are and what we do. Even now, when it seems that everything, even art and education, must follow a profit-driven business model, we are still an organization that values community more than money. We haven't followed the path of the other organizations. Our principal goal, according to Suzuki's philosophy, is a non-musical one: the objective is to grow human beings with beautiful hearts, through the medium of music. Unlike the other organizations we have no staff, our advertising is word-of-mouth, we have no glossy brochures; we are not a franchise, we are not profit-driven, we are non-competitive, we do no fundraising. This grassroots approach has worked well enough for us up until recently. But our environment has changed over the past 26 years - and we must, in Suzuki fashion, learn from it and adapt to it. As those who follow the business model of life would put it, "there is more and more competition in the marketplace."

In order to be viable, STEP needs to grow. In order to grow we need a higher profile - we need to be more visible. Although STEP groups of any level can and do perform in the community, it is the advanced groups which provide the "wow" effect that inspires parents of young children to choose STEP over Music for Young Children, or Kindermusic, or Shallaway, or any other group.

Our senior students - and our junior ones as well - watch their peers travel with their band, choir or orchestra to New York, Florida, Ireland, Ottawa, Denmark, Japan. The public applauds the returning groups and follows their progress when they are away. Is there anyone in St. John's, for example, that doesn't know that Shallaway has toured an opera to Denmark and Ireland this summer? Or that Gonzaga music program spent a weekend in New York? Or that the Youth Symphony went to Ottawa? Part of creating a nurturing environment for our senior students is providing them with the opportunity to tour. Our Young Virtuosi group class are as fine an ensemble as any other group in the city, and deserve to have this opportunity. If we don't provide it, we are in danger of losing them - they will choose to join another group which *does* provide it. Our junior students will then not have a group to look up to, to be inspired by, and to look forward to joining, and STEP will be in the same situation it has been in several times before - trying to build the program to the point where we have a group of senior students who can inspire us all. Let's not lose this group this time! We, and they, have worked so hard to get to this point. The Young Virtuosi have been invited, by Helen Brunner, to visit her program and perform in London, England! What an honour, for the whole program! Let's take pride in their (our!) achievement, and support them.

In order to provide performance opportunities for our kids, the program needs, now, to do some fundraising. In the past our fundraising efforts, such as the Play-A-Thon have been a lot of work for relatively little return. Through the efforts of STEP parent, Alastair Bath, and teacher Jennifer Johnson, we now have an opportunity to work with fundraiser Wayne Bartlett to hold an auction on October 23. It will mean a certain amount of work for us as a community, but it promises to bring in a significant amount of money. If we can make it a success (and, as a community, we can!) we will make it an annual event. The money will go to support all kinds of performance endeavours for groups of all levels. This time, though, a significant amount of the money must and should go to support our advanced class's trip to London. This first time, it is their turn, and they deserve it - they have been in the program the longest, and worked the hardest, and will grow up and leave us the soonest - they won't be around to take advantage of this in years to come. Their trip benefits our whole Suzuki community - what an inspiration for all the kids to see that hard work and effort pays off! What an encouragement for your kids to know that when it comes their turn to go, the Suzuki community will be there for them too!

This fundraiser is a first step for STEP. It is something other organizations have been doing since their inception, and it's a necessary step for us to take now. It is also an opportunity for us to strengthen our community, to build our profile, and to boast a little about what *we* have to offer. Please, everybody, get involved! What, in the way of goods and services, can you donate, or convince your friends to donate, to the auction? Call Colette Phillips with your donations, ideas, and offers of help. cmphillips@nf.sympatico.ca