Books update & ESTA National Forum
It has been an exciting couple of weeks. Firstly, I had 2 festivals (Worthing and Taunton in Somerset) where I heard some very fine and committed string playing from lots of young players.
Last Sunday was the ESTA (European String Teacher’s Association) National Forum day at the Yehudi Menuhin School in Surrey. Cellobabies was featured in a seminar given by Maureen Smith (Violin teacher at the Royal College of Music) on Beginner’s methods and I was also given the tell the delegates about how it all works. I was very pleased to have the opportunity to talk about my work to colleagues in the profession and it certainly has generated a lot of interest. If you have never come across ESTA before it is worth taking a look at the website www.estaweb.org.uk It is a fantastic organisation providing much support and information for the string teaching profession and I have been involved with it since my student days.
One development since then is Ackerman Music is now stocking my cellobabies books in all of their stores across Sussex.
I delivered the completed Violinbabies drafts to Judith & Sara who are trying it out for me. Sara reported very encouraging progress with one student who had difficulty with note-reading and who showed enormous improvement after being withdrawn from conventional reading for a short time to use my method, and then returned to her music and was able to read with greater security.