Bard musicians regale students

FALLS VILLAGE — Seated in the rustic concert hall atop Music Mountain it was immediately evident that the audience of third graders from Region One schools had an essential musical skill: an understanding of rhythm.

Oskar Espina-Ruiz, artistic director of the Music Mountain Summer Festival, clapped intricate patterns that the students repeated.

On Thursday, April 28, four music students from Bard College Conservatory in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., played for the group of about 100 students, discussed their instruments, the music they played and answered a variety of questions from the curious audience.

Liri Ronen, a musician from Israel, showed students how sound is made on the French horn using both his lips and fingers.

“Sound is vibration,” said a student, correctly answering Liri’s question to the audience, “What is sound?” After Liri played a transcription of Bach’s Prelude from Cello Suite No. 2 he asked what the music sounded like to them. One student said it made him think of Hercules.

The next musician played the bassoon — first, the familiar Pink Panther theme and then a piece by Mozart. Before playing, Anna Penn asked if the audience was familiar with Mozart, and at least a few of the students were — offering information about Mozart’s birthplace (Vienna, Austria) and his childhood accomplishment of writing his first symphony at age 8.

The concert hall was clearly in the process of preparation for a full season of music that begins June 5 with the renowned Rolston quartet. The Twilight Jazz concerts begin June 25 with the Bill Charlap Trio.

“We love reaching children with classical music, especially at this age,” Espina-Ruiz said. “They are open- minded, musically inclined and curious. Some are already playing an instrument and others are interested in starting.”

The last two performances of the afternoon were on instruments more familiar to the students: violin and piano. Klara Zaykova, from the Czech Republic, was asked by a student how hard the violin is to learn. She responded that while hard at the beginning each year it gets easier and easier — if you stick with it.

To wind up the show, pianist  Francis Huang  explained the difference between the original piano, which makes music mechanically by a hammer that taps the strings, and the electric one he was playing, which is a synthetic sound. Huang played a beautiful rendition of Bartók’s melodic Romanian Folk Dances and the sound, synthetic as it was, danced around the room and seemed to enchant the audience. Kellen Lockton, aged 9, commented that it was like “happy daydreams, upbeat and pretty. It was music that you would wish you would really want to make.”

In closing, Espina-Ruiz thanked Bard College Conservatory, Alicia Simonetti-Shpur from the Region One schools and the Arts Fund for Region One for continuing this concert tradition that has occurred at least 15 of the 93 years of Music Mountain’s history.

Dee Salomon is vice president of the Music Mountain Board of Directors.