Reflection: Fall 2023 Masterclasses

Throughout the end of November until the beginning of December, our Arts Unionville Strings
class has received three wonderful opportunities to connect and learn from highly experienced and
talented string musicians who could become potential mentors in our post-secondary endeavours. During
said time period, our class has worked with the Tesla String Quartet along with Alexander Mackenzie’s
string program, violinist, Mark Fewer and violist, Ryan Davis. In my reflection, I will be going through
my thought process as well as the things I have learned and taken away from each masterclass in
chronological order.

To start off, I was relieved to hear the Tesla String Quartet was coming to Unionville before the
rest of the class’ chamber performances, because they collectively offered loads of valuable insight for me
to apply to my own ensemble. The session started off with the chamber ensemble from Alexander
Mackenzie. The violist from Tesla, named Edwin Kaplan, gave a lot of comments on expression with
various bowing techniques, respective to the piece that they played. For example, he mentioned that the
cello part should start off with heavier bow strokes for more embellishment on expression, the viola part
should have sharper bow strokes, while the violin part should have a smooth legato on top. He even used
the interesting analogy of the feeling of ironing out a shirt. The smoothness of the violin’s legato should
still have weight, which is similar to the somewhat heavy back and forth motion of ironing out a shirt.
Personally, I am a visual learner. However, I liked how he used this analogy, because my intensive
practice of the violin has sort of heightened my other neurological senses that take part in my learning
success, such as listening. In addition, the descriptiveness of Edwin Kaplan’s analogy really resonated
with my learning style, because I always grew up using real world examples to help with my bowing, like
the “figure eight” motion, for example. Something the violinist said in the session was that when you are
playing a romantic piece, think about how you might express your love for someone currently in your life
and how? I think asking questions like this to oneself as a performer is vital to truly capture the essence of
the piece that is being practiced, as well as to enjoy it more because of how much of a personal
connection one draws to it. To transition to our program’s session with Tesla, the cellist used another
bowing strategy with Madelyn, and he said to not be afraid to take over and lead the ensemble to the next
harmony with heavier notes. He said to achieve this, she would have to pull the bow through the notes
more to hear them all with equal weight. This was a somewhat descriptive comment about bowing that
struck me, once again, because one cannot physically pull the bow through the notes, but when making
the sound, by applying that feedback, it is manageable to attain the heavy bow strokes.

The next masterclass our program did was with prominent violinist, Mark Fewer. This
masterclass especially resonated with me, because the central composer of focus was Bach, since Audrey
and Tina both played two of his pieces. To make matters even better, Audrey played the presto movement
of the Bach Sonata in G minor, and I am also currently working on it, so I wrote a lot of Mark’s comments
to help me with my playing. Coming back to my love for descriptive feedback, Mark said “Don’t push the
notes into the violin -- they’re already in there. You have to pull them out.” At first, I wasn’t sure about
what he meant, but then I made note of how he elaborated that practicing tugging the bow by setting it
first, then pulling from the left side of the string really helps to achieve full-sounding notes. Oftentimes,
going back to the basic techniques aids in achieving skills in more advanced levels.
 The final masterclass our class did was with the widely known violist, Ryan Davis. I
couldn’t make too many detailed notes on this masterclass, considering how it regarded the viola -- an
instrument I don’t play -- but I did make note of the different expressive controls one can make with a
string instrument. For example, Ryan Davis mentioned that, as string musicians, we don’t always like
using our fourth finger for the mere reason that it feels too weak. He went on by saying that it’s okay to
use a different finger and slide it for more expression for the sake of a stronger outcome. Him saying this
gave me a lot of comfort knowing that it’s a musically and technically acceptable tactic with fingering,
since I personally struggle with using my fourth finger, as well.

Overall, I truly enjoyed each and every one of these masterclasses -- learning things ranging from
bowing to fingering to other expressive controls on string instruments. I hope to meet more prominent
string musicians in the future and hopefully work with them in my post-secondary musical endeavors.