“Music Tells A Story”
Today’s offering is a guest post from Paule Barsalou, Artistic Director of the Suzuki String School of Guelph. Thank you, Paule, for agreeing to being my first guest blogger!
The Man With The Violin is going to the Suzuki String School of Guelph Spring Concert! On Sunday, April 27 at 3 pm at the River Run Centre in Guelph, Kathy Stinson will be reading her beautiful book. The 160 young students of our school will be performing the role of the violinist as she reads the story.
This has been the collaboration of a lifetime for our students who know Kathy through The Man With The Violin, Red Is Best and so many other books. Kathy is like a rock star for our young students who range in age from 3 to 18. They can’t wait to meet her in person and make her story come to life through their music.
Our collaboration started back last December, when Kathy asked if some of our students could play at a reading of her book at The Bookshelf, a bookstore here in Guelph. The experience was so successful that I decided to invite her to read her book at our Spring concert at the River Run Centre. This is an annual event and we aim at making it both educational and entertaining for our audience of around 400 family members and young children. The Man With The Violin will be the crown jewel of this concert.
The Bookshelf will be there to sell Kathy’s book and Kathy will be doing a book signing after the concert. The programme is entitled “Music Tells A Story” and will also include music that tell other stories from songs to movie sound tracks. The Guelph Youth Dance Company, a group of young modern dancers, will be doing a choreography on the Prelude to Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller, Psycho. All around, you are in for a wide range of emotions!
Ms. Barsalou is a Suzuki teacher trainer approved by the Suzuki Association of the Americas. Since 1989 she has been teaching at the Suzuki String School of Guelph in Guelph, Ontario and is now the artistic director of the school. She is a guest teacher at institutes and workshops throughout Canada and adjudicates at music festivals in Ontario. She is the principal 2nd violin of the Guelph Symphony Orchestra and occasionally performs chamber music. Ms. Barsalou is a past director of the Southwestern Ontario Suzuki Institute (1997-2009) held every August at Wilfrid Laurier University in Kitchener/Waterloo, Ontario. She lives in Guelph with her husband, pianist Ken Gee.
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Kathy Stinson is the author of the classic Red Is Best and the award-winning The Man with the Violin. Her wide range of titles includes picture books, non-fiction, young adult fiction, historical fiction, horror, biography, series books, and short stories. She has met with her readers in every province and territory of Canada, in the United States, Britain, Liberia, and Korea. She lives in a small town in Ontario.
