Willow Tree Montessori students have the opportunity to work with Suzuki trained educator Maureen Lyden-Ruhe on a weekly basis. We recently sat down with her, to get a more in-depth look at her life and career in music.
WTM: At what age did you start playing the violin?
MLR: I started playing at the age of 3, my Mom wanted to do something with just me after my brother was born, so she signed me up for a Suzuki violin class with Lisa Barca-Hall. She had read an article in the New Haven Register about Lisa, and the program she was starting for young children to learn violin. Lisa Barca-Hall founded Suzuki Music School of New Haven, Bethwood Suzuki Music School and trained with Carol Sykes in Harwich MA- who had trained under Dr. Suzuki.
WTM: Tell us a little bit about your background in music.
MLR: I don’t remember a time that music hasn’t been in my life. Besides playing the violin, when I was in 5th and 6th grade my music teacher taught me how to play upright bass because there wasn’t a violin part in the school band. I played violin in High School at Sacred Heart Academy, and participated in the Southern Regional Music Festival all 4 years of High School, and the All State Music Festival my Junior and Senior years. In High School I also began performing in musicals, first playing violin in the pit orchestra, and then eventually moving up on to the stage. I studied at Ithaca College, and I have a Bachelor of Arts in Drama with a minor in violin performance and a focus in Musical Theater. I received my Suzuki violin training and certification and First Steps in Music Training at the Hartt School of Music.
WTM: What brought you to WTM?
MLR: Mrs. Sloman. I grew up playing violin with Mrs. Sloman’s daughter.
WTM: Had you had other experience working in Montessori environments, or a background working in Montessori prior to coming to WTM?
MLR: In College I worked in a Montessori based program, as both a music teacher and a classroom assistant.
What I appreciate about working in a Montessori environment is that the children are given the opportunity to explore and create. I think creating a Suzuki program within the classroom is quite special, and the Suzuki philosophy and the Montessori Method pair nicely together: In that every child can learn, and learning music is like learning a second language.
WTM: What is your favorite song to play on the violin?
MLR: Concerto for Two Violins by Bach (also known as Bach Double). I can learn Concertos for the rest of my life, but that will always be my favorite. I learned it probably when I was about 10.
WTM: We know that you perform with, and donate your time to charity and community outreach. Can you speak a little bit on that?
MLR: I started volunteering with Ronald McDonald House (RMHC) back in High School. Over the course of the last 25 years I’ve been involved in their Lights of Love and Trees of Hope Events. My students have also starting getting involved, and we have also gone to play for their residents. For the last 18 years, I have brought students to be a part of their Trees of Hope event, which is a Christmas Tree Festival that benefits patients by raising funds and awareness.
For the last two years, I have also brought a group of students to provide music at the Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital: Evening of Remembrance. This beautiful event is a night for bereaved parents to share memories about their children, and gives them the opportunity to work with child life specialists through art, music and poetry therapies.
WTM: What is the most interesting song that you’ve been asked to play at an event or wedding?
MLR: An entire wedding with only music from the movie Twilight.
WTM: Tell us a little bit about how you founded Starlight Strings, and what that experience has been like for you? Or what has been the most rewarding aspect of that.
MLR: I founded Starlight Strings 2009 in Wallingford after leaving my position as string director at Bethwood Suzuki School.
WTM: You started out there, so it’s like full circle.
MLR: Definitely. I started student teaching with Lisa Barca-Hall in High School and in the summers during college, so I ended up coming back to teach there. It was so easy to come back to Bethwood because it was a place that I always called home.
When I first came back to teaching at Bethwood, I was pursuing working in both violin and drama at the time. Coming back to a place I had grown up, made it easy for me to balance my teaching schedule and still take the train into the city for auditions. Starlight Strings eventually gave me an extension of that. Now, I have kept in touch with many of my former Bethwood students, and have even played at some of their weddings!
Since creating Starlight Strings, in the last 10 years I have been able to give my students different kinds of opportunities to play for the community and charity events. These same students have gone on to also play in regional and all state festivals, as well as in college.
WTM: Do you have a great or interesting audition story?
I do actually. It was more of a job interview that turned into an audition. When I was commuting back and forth to New York, teaching early childhood music, violin and performing in many musicals, I was given the opportunity to apply for a job at a very prestigious Early Childhood Center in the heart of Manhattan. They were looking for a teacher who could teach the children music, some instruments, but who also had a background in Theatre. This seemed like a perfect fit. I arrived planning to interview, maybe play some violin, and was dressed as so –professional looking skirt and blouse, heels- this was Manhattan after all. When I came, in the School Director, an older gentleman who had been at the school for 35 years, had me come into a classroom and asked me to sing a ballad from any Broadway show. I wasn’t prepared to sing, but had just performed as Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors, so Somewhere That’s Green was the obvious choice. In the middle of my singing, he took out a box of puppets threw them all over the floor, told me to stop singing my song, and said he would set a timer and every time it beeped I had to pick up a puppet, sing a different Children’s song in a different character voice, and interact with him as if he were a child in the class. I did 5 puppets/songs before he asked me to stop. He shook my hand and showed me out to the office. I never heard from that school again.
WTM: Is there anything else that you’d like to share?
I love working with the students at Willow Tree, and I look forward to seeing what we accomplish with our violins this year!
Maureen Lyden-Ruhe also has a music studio in her home, which provides her the opportunity to teach, as well as be home with her two awesome kids, ages 5 and 9. When not teaching, she enjoys volunteering at their schools, working at Book Fairs, Plant Sales, classroom events, helping in the Library, and hiking in the woods every other Friday with the Kindergarten. She has worked with Hartford Children’s Theatre and The Whitney Players as a music director and also an actress, as well as performing with several other local theatre companies. She loves everything Broadway and everything Disney, and when not playing violin you can usually find her singing with her daughter. She has been married for 11 years, and lives with her family in Wallingford.
We had the opportunity to briefly speak to Lisa Barca-Hall, Maureen’s mentor and teacher, she gave us a little bit of background on how she trained many aspiring violinists to hone their craft to become successful musicians and teachers.
She said “ Maureen Lyden began her studies with me at age three. She was shy and quiet as a preschooler. I remember calling her up to the front of her group class, to play a little snippet of “Lightly Row” and she totally surprised us all by playing the entire song! Maureen grew up at my two Suzuki schools playing in every concert and demonstration and recital she could. As a teen and young teen, she was an eager teaching assistant and showed a true love and enthusiasm for working with the youngest students though she was an inspiration for all.”
Lisa Barca-Hall was a first generation Suzuki student, having studied as a child in the sixties with several of Dr. Suzuki’s original American protégés including Susan Grilli and Carol Sykes. She has taught thousands of Suzuki students ages 2 through adult and trained numerous teachers for over forty years in Massachusetts, Connecticut and California. A graduate of Yale University, and the mother of seven children, she founded and directed the Suzuki Music School of New Haven in 1979 and the Bethwood Suzuki School in 1988 where Maureen Lyden began her violin studies. She also developed Kinderhythms, a unique pre-instrumental music and movement program for toddlers incorporating the Suzuki repertoire, and has been a clinician at workshops in New England and California. Mrs. Barca-Hall moved to California in 1995 where she developed Suzuki programs in Los Gatos and Santa Cruz public schools, as well as private programs in Santa Clara and Santa Cruz. Despite officially “retiring” a few years ago, Lisa currently directs the Suzuki string program at Carmel River School where her daughter in law is the general music instructor. She has four grandchildren who are happily playing Suzuki violin and cello.
