By Manuela Iparraguirre
For more than twenty years, we have had the opportunity to sustain a Suzuki program in guitar and piano financed by the government of our province, Buenos Aires. This program takes place at the Conservatory Gilardo Gilardi in the city of La Plata, Argentina. Here, we give low-income students as young as age four the amazing opportunity to study through the Suzuki Method without having to pay anything.
We provide the same possibilities to all children and families, in a country with a poverty rate above fifty percent. Our program starts with a group of meetings with the parents in which they learn about the Suzuki Method and the first steps with the instrument. At the same time they are having these meetings, they observe some lessons, and then the students start their classes. They have two lessons per week: a group lesson and an individual lesson. We also organize classes with Suzuki Method students of other teachers and institutions.
This project was started around twenty-five years ago by the pioneers Diana Chagalj (guitar), who was my teacher, Graciela Vides (piano), and Adriana Bianchi (piano). Now, it continues through the teachers Cecilia Cáceres (piano), Rosalía Capponi (piano) and myself (guitar). For me, continuing with this project that my teacher started is an incredible honor and a way to give back what they gave me.
Sustaining this project that my teacher started is very important for me, and I try to give the students the same opportunities that I had. This program was such a large motivator in my life and helped me to sustain my learning process. This year, we organized an amazing Suzuki Guitar Festival with the participation of more than one hundred students, families, and teachers from different parts of our country and Peru. Also, the students of the project had master classes and a lot of concerts. Nowadays, we are planning to make some recordings too.
We are working hard to expand this program in the future. When we have one or two new vacancies, we have around twenty families on our waiting list to draw from to be part of the project. Of course, the extension of this project is not only in our hands, it depends on government and bureaucratic things, but we want to continue building it.
It is one of the two public and free Suzuki programs that we have in our country, the other one based at the University of Córdoba, in the province of Córdoba, Argentina.
We want to give more children this amazing opportunity that can change their future. We believe deeply in providing students with the opportunity to receive a quality musical education that gives them knowledge not only about music, but also about life. In our lessons, we not only learn how to play guitar, but we also learn about working together and values such as solidarity, responsibility, perseverance, tolerance, resilience, and compromise, among others.