by Jeffrey Stanley

“Play your A, Wes. You all have three minutes to tune!”

Music teacher Elvira Sullivan, a number two pencil in hand in lieu of a baton, brought the seventh and eighth grade String Orchestra class to order. She helped tune the cellos, violins and violas of students who couldn’t quite get it on their own. One young violinist had twisted too hard and broken a string. Elvira seized the opportunity to turn the problem into a lesson for the whole class: “Okay everybody, watch how I put a string on while I do it.” Students craned their necks over their music stands to watch. As she restrung the violin they continued their warm-up scales.

With a wave of her arms she got the sixteen students to stop their sawing and chattering and settle down. “I can’t see you behind your music stands, sit up straight. Let’s go. I want this piece polished, cellists and violinists!” she said with wry emphasis for the benefit of her struggling cello section.

The students launched into “Us and Them” by John Lloyd. “Pluck together,” she instructed the cellists. “Pluck! Louder everyone!” She stopped the music, disappointed.

“But it says to play softly,” complained one violinist.

“As your conductor I have the liberty to change that,” said the teacher firmly. “Let’s go.” She picked it up from measure 77. “It’s the beginning of a phrase.” Soon they were off and running again. “Good. Now get soft. Soft! Softer than you were at measure 81! Softer, violins. Good. Now cellos.”

The song began to take shape. The violins and cellos spoke back and forth to one another in a call and response arrangement. She stopped them again and reached for her own cello, playing a portion of the song for them. Elvira played the section two different ways, demonstrating two bowing styles, one flowing and one more discrete. “What’s the difference between these two?” she asked.

“One is more graceful?” attempted one student.

“Sure, graceful if you want to call it that. The word is legato, when the bow stays connected with the strings, as opposed to staccato, in which the bow leaves the strings between notes.”

The problem wasn’t getting the students to play, it was getting them to stop playing between songs. Throughout the class period these Middle Schoolers expressed their age-appropriate need for attention not with chit-chat but with their instruments, fiddling around with them at inappropriate times. “Stop playing!” Elvira demanded. “Sometimes you sound like elephants marching in the mud.”

“Teacher hits student with bow,” quipped one student.

“Yes, front page of the Post,” she shot back, grinning. “Stop playing.”

They did so and she gave them a few pointers before plowing into the next section of the song. “There’s a fermata there, hold that note!”

A communal sense took over as the students realized that if everyone played together then everyone sounded better and the song came to life. They made it through the last triumphant measure with enough mastery that even they knew before their teacher announced that they had done a great job. “Contredanse, Contredanse, Contredanse!” one eager student shouted before the last note had faded, referring to the next song they would work on that day.

Indeed, it was time to move along to the next song, clearly a favorite with the class. “Yes, Contredanse,” nodded Elvira. “This is an advanced piece.”

Time was almost up, the class would be ending soon, but they launched into Larry Clark’s song allegro con brio just as the sheet music indicated. They pulled it off without a hitch until the very last measure when a few wild notes screeched out around the room. Elvira’s heart sank. ‘Oh, you killed it at the end!” she said with a smile.

“That was good though!” insisted one student.

She nodded. “Yes, it was good.”

They packed up and headed into the hallway.

The students had sawed and plucked nearly uncontrollably between songs despite their teacher’s imprecations to remain silent, but when playing they had fallen in line and performed their roles beautifully. “They’re at that age,” said Elvira with a roll of her eyes. They’re Middle Schoolers. “I said once said to one of them, ‘Do you act this way in your other classes?’ He said, ‘I don’t have a cello in my other classes.’ He’d missed my point entirely.”

A professional cellist, Elvira began teaching at Brooklyn Friends as an assistant teacher and an after school private cello teacher in 2001. Two years later she began teaching orchestra classes in the Lower, Middle and Upper Schools.

The Third and Fourth Grade Orchestra, for example, meets after school for one hour on Tuesdays and about 10 students participate in the class. The Fifth Grade Orchestra and the Sixth Grade Orchestra each meet twice a week for 45 minutes and there are 14 student musicians in each group. There also is a Middle School Chamber Music class, a group of dedicated young musicians who meet during activity period to study and play music. “The students in this group take private lessons and are quite advanced,” explained Elvira. “They learn how to structure a rehearsal as an ensemble based on the composer’s intent, practicing for precision, balance, sound production dynamics, articulation, and interpretation.

In the Upper School, Elvira teaches an advanced course in chamber music and music theory that only admits five of the most advanced and dedicated students. In addition, she coordinates the afterschool instructional music program, which, she says proudly, is expanding at a tremendous rate. (Students may sign up for lessons at any time during the school year.)

Outside of Brooklyn Friends, Elvira is the supervising cello teacher, conductor and chamber music coach for the outreach program of the School for Strings, which teaches children using the famed Suzuki method. Additionally she is the music director for the Children’s International Chamber Music Festival that takes place every summer.

She is also a mother and grandmother.

How do Brooklyn Friends students stack up against the others? “Considering the fact that music education in America has ceased to exist in the past fifty years they are advanced and privileged...It is the first orchestra class that I know of that’s actually meeting the national standards for music education.”

Throughout the class the students had demonstrated an outspoken rapport with their teacher. “One cannot approach a creative art form from a rigid point of view,” she says of her teaching style. “I strive to appeal to a variety of playing levels and learning styles. My main focus is to create a love of music and well integrated musicians. The arts are a powerful teaching tool, and music unites people in a very special way.”