Ari Goldman - The Late Starters Orchestra

Judah’s relationship with his teacher Laura was perhaps less philosophical but equally spiritual and emotional.

Judah was easy to fall in love with. He is our youngest, separated from his brother by eleven years and his sister by seven years. He relished his junior status in the family, and he was far more compliant than his siblings were at his age. Until he was a teenager, we never got an argument out of him. He listened. He also looked like the baby with his chubby build, curly dirty blond hair, and chipmunk cheeks. While other preteens couldn’t wait to grow up, Judah savored his babydom. He liked the cartoon character Pajama Sam and he was an avid collector of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. He even favored plastic dishes and tiny silverware when he ate.

I stopped sitting in on the lessons, but I never stopped listening to the music. My favorite moments were when Judah and Laura would play duets, simple pieces like the chorus from Judas Maccabaeus by Handel or the theme from “Witches’ Dance” by Paganini. But even when Laura played along, the focus was on Judah. She’d put down her cello and give him a standing ovation.

Laura grew up playing the Suzuki method and was trained to teach it. As she was well connected in the Suzuki world, she recommended that we check out the summer Suzuki program in Hartford, Connecticut. We signed up, packed the car with Judah’s half-size cello, and headed for Hartford, which, as it happens, is the city of my birth. Hartford has all sorts of associations for me. Although I moved away from Hartford when my parents divorced, I kept coming back throughout my childhood to spend weekends with my dad, who remained there for most of his life.

Suzuki camp is just a week long and a parent or other responsible adult is expected to be on hand to supervise. Judah went for four summers and, on our trips to Hartford, I showed Judah the sites: the hospital I was born in, my childhood home, the house where my grandparents lived, and even the Mark Twain House, Hartford’s national landmark. But perhaps the place that made the greatest impression on him was the Crown Market, the kosher supermarket where we bought deli sandwiches practically every night after Suzuki camp.

On one trip, I even gave Judah a tour of the synagogues of Hartford, the one we went to (Orthodox) and, of course, the one my family would never step into (the Conservative one). Judah and I caught a service one summer afternoon at the Orthodox Young Israel of West Hartford. A man a few years younger than me approached and asked, “Are you Marvin’s son?” When I said yes, he warmly embraced me. “I thought that was you,” he said. “We met several years ago at your father’s apartment in Jerusalem. I was visiting Israel with my family and we shared a meal with you at his apartment.”

The man’s name was Stan and I had only the vaguest memory of meeting him in Israel. My father, who worked in real estate, had retired with his second wife to Jerusalem at the age of seventy. He lived out his remaining years there and died peacefully in Jerusalem at the age of seventy-seven.

“Your dad played a very important role in my life,” Stan was saying. He told me how, as a boy of fourteen, he became attracted to greater Jewish observance and began to go to synagogue, often alone. My father, too, was sitting alone and soon they struck up a friendship. “We used to sit together every Shabbos,” Stan said. “He became my mentor and advisor.” Over the years, Stan became more involved Jewishly and aspired to go to Yeshiva University, which was the school of the men of my family (both my father and I went there, as did numerous uncles, both on my mother’s side and on my father’s side). My father saw Stan through the admissions process to Yeshiva and even secured financial aid for his first year of college, when Stan’s parents balked at paying. Later, my father helped him and his wife purchase their first house in Hartford. “He held our hands throughout the process, guiding us and giving us confidence with every step,” Stan said.

I had mixed emotions about all this. On the one hand, I was proud that my father was such a strong mentor. On the other, I was envious. In my teens I was living in New York with my mother and often sat alone in synagogue. My dad was not very much involved with my college education and was certainly not there when I bought my first house (which turned out to be a big financial mistake).

I remembered how Andrew had told me that Mr. J was a “terrible father” and how that was corroborated by events such as his leaving his family behind in Guatemala and his tolerance of his second wife’s poor treatment of Andrew. Yet I idolized Mr. J and considered him not just my teacher, but my “musical father.”

Perhaps, I mused, that is the nature of fathers and sons. As fathers we do our best to encourage and nurture and support. It is, however, an impossible job and, inevitably, we come up short. There isn’t a child without complaint. There isn’t a father without regrets.

Often, we fathers find, there’s someone who does it better: a teacher, a friend, a mentor. Maybe not everything better, but some things, perhaps just enough to highlight our inadequacies. I suppose fathers have to be thankful for that someone else. These thoughts were rattling around my head as I traveled through Hartford with Judah for those four summers. I was hoping to be both a father and a mentor to him and yet wondering how well I would succeed at either.

THE SUMMER SUZUKI PROGRAM is housed at the Hartt School at the University of Hartford. The first summer that we went, Judah was in something called pre-orchestra, in which children learned where to sit (cellos to the right, violins to the left), how to stand when the conductor enters (in unison), how to be recognized if you have a question (raise your bow), and how to applaud with a bow in your hand (by stomping your feet). Playing music with other children was a new experience for him. Suzuki has a great parent-teacher support system but this was our first exposure to a broader musical world for children. It is one thing to hear your child play “Cha-Cha Twinkle” but to hear fifty little kids play it! That’s a community dedicated to making music.

Judah made friends and also discovered more teachers who made learning fun. By his second summer at the Suzuki camp, Judah left pre-orchestra behind and was in a real youth orchestra. The conductor was a delightful educator named Dominic, a small man with a prominent mustache, bushy eyebrows, and just the right touch with kids. “Who knows vibrato?” he asked. Vibrato is the musical effect that a string player achieves by pulsating the left hand to produce slight and rapid variations in pitch. Again, I think of Mr. J. Although he often spoke in transcendent terms about voice, body, and mind, when it came to vibrato, he was much more down to earth. Vibrato comes from the hand. There is nothing magical here. This is a mechanical function of the hand. If it is hard, it is because we are not used to it, but the hand can be taught.

Vibrato is a technique that takes some time to develop and separates the more advanced student from the beginner. In one lovely children’s book that Judah and I read, The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt by Patricia MacLachlan, the main character, a technically excellent cellist, awaits the coming of her vibrato the way most girls await their first period. Vibrato means you’ve come of age.

As Dominic asked the question to the Suzuki group, a few of the young musicians raised their bows, signaling that they had crossed the divide and knew vibrato. Judah was not there yet. Dominic seemed to be separating the haves from the have-nots, and I felt a pang of sorrow for my son and wondered if he felt it, too. But then Dominic burst the bubble with this instruction: “Good. Do it. Vibrato doesn’t do anything but it looks good!”