Sing me a song

Jbird and I have been taking advantage of the summer concert series at IU.  They have an excellent line up because there's both a string and a piano summer school for high school students from around the country.  Tonight we saw Gilles Apap who delights in Irish folk music but is largely a classical virtuosi.  The first half was solo repertoire, the second The Four Seasons with kids from the string summer school.  I won't go into detail about the concert but I wish you could have seen it.  He's a dynamic, charismatic performer.  

I was inspired from his work with the youth.  They opened the Four Seasons by singing it and I had to kick myself.  Just this morning, I was struggling through a lesson with a four year old Chinese boy who speaks almost no English.  I always have my students sing their pieces to me and with me.  He's not really very into that and this morning when I insisted he do it again, he said "why?"  I'm sorry to say that I had almost forgotten and had no answer for him - the lack of spoken language barrier certainly held me back from launching into my usual tirade - it's an easy way to learn rhythm and notes, it helps with reading and pitch, if you can sing it, you'll know when you're playing it wrong etc.

The real answer is short and sweet: if you want to play the violin, it should share qualities of singing, that's why.  Musicality comes quite naturally from within us if we practice it.  For some, it just comes naturally.

*I wanted to link you to a recording of his Four Seasons but I could only find this which is a small look at what they were doing at the concert except with another group, and it's only a tiny part of it.  Or you can buy his version here.