Category: Violin Videos: Brian Lewis teaches

Brian Lewis teaches "Tonalization"

During the 7th European Suzuki Teachers Exchange Convention in Germany, October, 30 - November, 2 2015, teachers from 21 countries of Europe, Asia, Africa, USA and Canada participated at the conference, organized by the German Suzuki Association. One of the conference highlights was the world-renowned American violinist and pedagogue Brian Lewis.

As a child, he studied with and performed for Dr. Suzuki on many occasions. As a dynamic and engaging teacher, Brian Lewis is committed to growing the legacies of the great pedagogues Dorothy DeLay and Shinichi Suzuki.
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Brian Lewis discussed the importance of studying tone production at all stages of development, which is an idea central to many great pedagogues, and well known to all Suzuki teachers due to Suzuki’s emphasis on beautiful tone. Brian explained that ‘people tend to judge us by our sound, and our job as soloists is to be heard’.

Brian explained that even with his most advanced students, he uses Suzuki’s Tonalization exercise to emphasise resonance and ringing notes. Brian also has his students watch the string physically vibrate, which aids their understanding further.

With each student, Brian worked on dramatically changing their sound, and discussing sound-related terminology differences that teachers have used in the past. Galamian spoke of lanes, Suzuki spoke of the Kreisler Highway, and Delay spoke of the Forte sounding point. However, they are all referring to the same sound concepts that we as violinists need to internalise.

Brian talks more about Suzuki’s Tonalization in the following video: