Visit From Ying Quartet Brings

Advice And Support

By Tanjua Damon

They are not only a family, but a group of professional musicians who brought fun and expertise to the Newtown High School Orchestra Monday.

The Ying Quartet spent the morning at the high school, providing a musical lesson from professional musicians through exercises and dialogue with the students in the orchestra. It was an opportunity for the quartet to offer advice and support, as well as provide the students with a chance to gain perspective on their own music.

The Ying Quartet consists of three brothers and one sister — Dave on cello, Phil on viola, and Tim and Janet on violin. The group was brought to the high school through the Newtown Friends of Music organization’s Outreach Program.

The first part of the program was an exercise in which two students, Travis Finlayson and Emeline Walker, had to act out different ways of projecting “come over here” with their voices. The exercise showed how interpretations are similar in both voice and music.

“It’s something we do every moment of our lives; we interpret what each other says,” Dave Ying said. “But they [the students] were saying it in such a way that we understood the meaning of those words. Read between the lines, we definitely get an impression of people by the way they manipulate their voices.”

The orchestra students pointed out the ways people use their voice to make a point. Examples included the volume of a person’s voice, stresses on different words, tone of voice. Dave used these examples to remind students that music is quite the same through interpretation.

“Obviously you have been playing instruments long enough to know that goes with music also,” he said. “I get a bit caught up in following the instruction of the music. All of those things are intended to give meaning.”

Phil Ying reinforced to the students that all the notes and skills they perform are used to say something through the music they are playing.

“Take the same words by changing the way you say them. Notes, the way you play them,” Phil said. “We spend so many years playing these notes. If we take all of these skills and say something, first consider what those words are. A good friend of mine said, ‘Listen for possibilities.’”

“Listen for possibilities” is one way Phil was telling the students to look to see what might need to be changed; or if you change the tone of something, what message will that send through the music?

There are 79 students in the Newtown High School Orchestra. Each could have a different interpretation of music.

“For some mysterious reason the way we interpret music is the same way we interpret people’s voices,” Tim Ying said. “That’s a very strange thing..”

Tim wanted the students to understand that with voice and music being so similar, thinking about how one might say something could be beneficial to the way they play something.

“Go back to the way you would say it,” he said. “Sometimes we don’t make that connection logically.”

The Ying Quartet practices four hours each day. Learning new music is confusing at first, but time and effort takes care of that confusion. The group told the students that most of their disagreements are about music and that each of them looks at a piece with his or her own interpretation.

Janet Ying said she enjoys going to schools to take part in providing information about music to students.

“It’s really important,” she said. “Not only to encourage young musicians to study music, but also to help them.”

Orchestra teacher Michelle Hiscavich enjoyed having The Ying Quartet come to the school and provide instruction and evaluation of the high school orchestra, particularly since the students listen to her every day during class. This allows for something new.

“I’m very excited. We have been trying to get this opportunity for years,” Ms Hiscavich said. “It supports and enhances what they are doing. The students are getting a different perspective..”

“This is a good chance to watch professionals play and it’s a reflective kind of thing,” James Kaechele said. “We can’t look at ourselves in the third person.”

Donald Rowe, who plays the trombone, felt at first it may not benefit him since all four of the quartet’s musicians play strings, but found the group to be beneficial for all instruments.

“They talked about the music itself,” he said. “It wasn’t specific to any particular instrument.”

After a bit of instruction, the high school orchestra played for the quartet, and then they all played together.