Classics for Kids
Great Music, Great Cause
Photos by Derik Olsen
By Savannah Barnes
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Upright bass player Bozeman Montana
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For close to two decades, summer in Montana has meant extraordinary classical music by members of the Muir Quartet and acclaimed guests. The annual Montana Chamber Music Festival returns with six performances. The Bozeman and Red Lodge concerts feature students who have been mentored by professional musicians, including Muir Quartet cellist Michael Reynolds.
“Simply put, if children learn a musical instrument, they get smarter, more creative, and more disciplined,” states Reynolds, Artistic Director of the Classics for Kids Foundation (CFKF). He should know: he grew up under the influence of music from his late father, Creech Reynolds, a former head of Montana State University’s music department, violin professor, and namesake for the campus recital hall.
In 1989 Michael and his father formed the Montana Chamber Music Festival to bring mountain audiences the sounds of world-class strings and piano. In 1998 Bozeman businessman and cellist Roger Kirk founded the nonprofit CFKF along with Michael Reynolds, John Kirk, and Tyll Hertsens. Through grants and donations the program now serves over twenty diverse communities from Santa Barbara to Philadelphia. In recent years the foundation began presenting the music festival to help support CFKF throughout the year.
The CFKF was created in response to the decline of music education programs for young people in America. Numerous studies listed on CFKF’s web site show that students who study music perform better across the board in reading, math, problem-solving, and self-concept. In fact, the College Entrance Examination Board found that students with at least four years of arts study scored 59 points higher on the verbal and 44 points higher on the math portions of the SAT.
The premise of CFKF is simple: students are more likely to stick with an instrument if it is a pleasure to play. Poor quality instruments are difficult to play and keep in tune, do not sound good, and break easily. Students’ self-respect and self-esteem go up when trusted with a high-quality instrument. Of course, in this era of declining budgets, fine string instruments are beyond the reach or priority of many schools.
Applications for nonprofits to purchase instruments for schools and for mentoring are on the web site. Reynolds reaches students through intense, day-long workshops two or three times a year. He exhibits the foundation’s mission to “inspire and empower young people to shape their own positive futures through playing music.”
Collaborative efforts are also underway with local musicians Tom Robison and Hallie Ruggheimer for a fiddle workshop with guest violinist, Will Fedkenheur, a Canadian fiddle champion. The workshop will be held with the Boys and Girls Club.
For more information about the foundation, call 406-587-8183 and visit www.classicsforkids.org.
Mike Reynolds and the Muir Quartet Perform on Behalf of Classics for Kids
By Marjorie Smith
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Michael Reynolds with a class in Bozeman Montana
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On a warm summer evening, several musicians and music lovers gather in a private home high on a mountainside outside Bozeman. Most of us have been here before —you can tell the first-timers by the way their jaws drop when they see the view from the spacious living room: towering mountains nearby and most of the Gallatin Valley in the distance.
The host and hostess allow their guests time on the terraces to exclaim over the view, to see if the neighborhood bear has arrived for his nightly foraging for seeds under the industrial strength, unclimbable bird feeder, and to fret about the brown-edged trees that indicate the dreaded spruce budworms have invaded even this magical realm.
Then we are called back into the house where rented chairs have been set up for about thirty of us to spend an hour listening to the most sublime chamber music many of us will hear this year. Michael Reynolds, founding cellist of the Muir Quartet, and his friends and siblings are performing their annual concert to benefit the Classics for Kids Foundation.
We listen to the world premiere of a moving duet for cellos composed by Bozeman’s own Ilse Mari Lee which she plays with Reynolds to honor her mentor, Gordon Epperson, who died just a few months ago. Then Michael’s sister, Kathleen Reynolds, demonstrates a whole new way to hear the music of Astor Piazzolla: three tangos played by Kathleen on bassoon along with Muir Quartet founding violinist Bayla Keyes and current violinist Pater Zazofsky, with Will Fedkenheuer on viola, Michael on cello and Bayla’s husband, Paul Glenn, on bass fiddle. As a person who plays the accordion (yes, I admit to it – even in company such as this) it is a revelation to hear Piazzolla with nary a squeezebox in sight! Anyone who didn’t get it when Yo Yo Ma recorded Piazzolla should understand now: this is real, serious music!
The concert concludes with a quintet by Mozart featuring William Scharnberg on French horn. I’ve heard many a French horn in my life but I had no idea the instrument could sound quite this lovely and effortless. Yet another revelation.
With the last glorious notes still hanging on the mountain air, the host recruits help to set up tables and invites the guests to sample some of his favorite wines. The talented young woman who produced the buffet introduces her creations to the crowd and then listeners and musicians sit down together for a meal. The musicians have come from Massachusetts and Texas and points in between to help raise money for Classics for Kids through the annual series of concerts that make up the Montana Chamber Music Festival. It’s easy to see why this particular event is one of their favorite performances in a year’s music making.
After dinner, Michael sits down to tell me about his dedication to this young foundation. “It’s opened up a whole new aspect of life to me,” he says. One might wonder what could be missing from the life of a Bozeman boy who grew up to reach the pinnacle of his chosen career – playing beautiful, challenging music on his cello for audiences around the world. “Now I get to think beyond learning and performing music. I’m learning about fundraising and public relations and dealing with public school systems.”
And is it worth it?
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Michael Reynolds performing
on the cello Bozeman Montana
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“Let me tell you a story,” Michael says. He describes a large inner-city school district in which the superintendent had heard about the so-called Mozart effect which holds that babies who are exposed to Mozart and other classical music are brighter than other babies. The educator chose the elementary school with the very lowest test scores in his city and decreed that every fourth grader at that school would study the violin or another stringed instrument. Within three years, that school had the best test scores in the city.
“But of course if you’re going to get kids hooked on music, they need decent instruments to play, instruments that stay in tune and sound good.” That realization motivates Reynolds and all the others involved with Classics for Kids. They dream of the day a disadvantaged child sits down in a living room like this and plays sublime music for another group of enchanted listeners who reach for their checkbooks to ensure that the magic continues.
As the evening draws to a close, a magnificent lightning storm sweeps into the canyon, lighting up the windows all around. I take it as a confirmation that something remarkable is afoot in the Bozeman area.
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