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Jeana-Dee Allen
The State News

David Kim, concertmaster for the Philadelphia Orchestra, center, teaches a master’s class Friday afternoon at Lansing Community College’s John H. Dart Center for the Performing Arts. “I’m not a violin player, so a lot of the time I can’t tell good classical music from bad classical music,” said LCC student and East Lansing resident Mike Smalley (foreground).

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Violinists perform for master

Lansing — Eric Olson’s mind went blank as he climbed the stage steps and took his place inside the stream of light falling from the auditorium’s rafters.

The first-year MSU music performance graduate student twisted the knobs of his violin before standing silent. A moment later, he slid the bow across the strings.

“You have one chance to go up there and just play,” Olson said. “You have one piece. You’re not, like, playing six pieces in a recital — you’ve got your one shot.”

Olson was one of six Lansing-area violin students invited to perform for David Kim, the Philadelphia Orchestra’s concertmaster, during a violin master class Friday at Lansing Community College’s John H. Dart Center for the Performing Arts, 500 N. Capitol Ave., in Lansing.

As concertmaster, Kim acts as the liaison for more than 90 musicians in the orchestra and its conductor.

“(The concertmaster is) really the first chair violinist of the first violins,” Kim said. “The violins really carry the tune a lot in big symphony.”

David Gross, executive director of the Lansing Symphony Orchestra, said Kim held the master class for local violin students after performing with the group.

Faculty members from MSU’s College of Music, LCC’s violin instructor and the Lansing Symphony Orchestra narrowed the field to the final six participants, who ranged from a 7-year-old student to graduate students.

“Education is so important to me, so I asked them if they would arrange a master class so I could hear some young people from this area,” Kim said.

For Olson, finding out he could get feedback from a professional musician was exciting, but picking a new piece to perform before the event heightened his fears.

“They thought it was silly to have two coachings on the same piece, so I just said, ‘Well, you know, I can play this instead,’” Olson said. “I knew it pretty well, but it’s like you always realize how well you know a piece when you have to perform it in a different venue.”

Published on Sunday, September 7, 2008