Shenandoah Valley
Biography
Alicia Kulla-Branz Bont is a Suzuki teacher in the Parkway School District in St. Louis, Missouri. She currently teaches elementary strings and has also taught middle school and high school orchestra in Parkway over the past 10 years. She also has had a private violin and viola studio for the past 20 years. Alicia grew up as a Suzuki student in the SIUE program under the tutelage of John Kendall, Carol Smith, Vera McCoy-Sulentic and Lenora-Marya Anop. She received her Bachelor's Degree in violin performance and music education in 2004 from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville and her Master's Degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 2009 where she studied with Dr. Laurie Scott and Dr. Robert Duke. She is an active member of the Suzuki Association of the Americas and has presented at several Suzuki and ASTA conferences over the past 10 years. She has also conducted workshops at the University of Texas, the SIUE Suzuki Program and the Cordoba Suzuki Program in Argentina. Currently she enjoys teaching a Suzuki Baby Music Class for 0-3 year old's in the Tower Grove Neighborhood where she lives with her husband Chris and two children Penelope and ?
HELPFUL HINTS FOR PARENTS
OF GREAT ORCHESTRA MUSICIANS
Encourage and praise your child whenever possible. Praise is especially deserving if a job is well done, a song is well played, or a consistent effort is made.
Encourage regular daily practice. Set up a regular practice schedule and help your child follow it. String instruments skills are built gradually a little bit at a time. Fifteen minutes each day is much better than two hours at the end of the week.
Encourage listening to recordings of solo and string orchestra music. Your child needs to have a good model of string playing to imitate. Rate of progress can be doubled if listening is done regularly. It is especially important to listen to recordings of current study pieces (check the website for these recordings).
Encourage your child to give mini concerts at home whenever possible. If your child performs regularly before and audience, performance nerves will never be a problem.
Listen to your child play and practice whenever possible. Encourage repetition of “older” pieces to develop better tone, musicianship, and develop an active repertoire of pieces he or she knows well. Encourage careful practice of new pieces. YOU DO NOT NEED TO HAVE A TRAINED MUSICAL EAR TO DO THIS!
Establish an environment where your child can succeed in becoming a good string player. You will have given one of the most priceless gifts of all to your child, the gift of music.