As graduation day neared, Farida Esaa faced hours of violin practice to prepare for her senior recital in April. Plus she needed to complete a community service project in order to graduate. So she resourcefully decided to combine the two challenges by seeking out sponsors for each hour she practiced violin between January and March and donating the proceeds to the Deafness Research Foundation (DRF).
Why DRF? "My ear, my sense of hearing, is very important to my being a musician," Esaa says. This is especially true since she has learned to play violin using the Suzuki Method, which is hearing-based.* As a result, she was able to play at age five, but didn't learn to read music until she was eight.
As a student at Williamsport Area High School, in Williamsport, Pa., Esaa embarked on her community service project by e-mailing sponsorship invitations to friends, teachers and doctors at the local hospital. The response was more enthusiastic than she had expected. About 35 people agreed to sponsor her practice, and she found that they were far more generous than she had anticipated with donations amounting to almost $1,500.
DRF was not the only beneficiary. Knowing that her practice was going to raise money for a good cause gave Esaa added incentive and made her recital that much more meaningful. "It was more than just the culmination of my years of practice," she said.
This fall Esaa is headed to Haverford College, near Philadelphia. She plans to "maybe become a doctor"and definitely to keep playing violin.
*The Suzuki Method was conceived in the mid-20th century by Shin'ichi Suzuki, a skilled violinist but a beginner at the German language, which he struggled to learn. He noticed that all children pick up their native language quickly and thought that they could learn to play an instrument with the same ease with which they learn language. In the Suzuki Method, learning music by ear is emphasized initially over reading musical notation, in line with obvious observations about language acquisition children learn to speak before learning to read. Students are expected to memorize their complete solo repertoire, even after they learn to read sheet music. Though originally used for the study of violin, it has been adapted for other instruments and even non-musical subjects in early childhood education.
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