Paula Zeitlin taught us Jazz Improv skills in such a simple and comfortable way, that the following day, we had a ball playing with a professional Jazz Trio. Louis Bergonzi lit up our inspiration and energy to raise up our rehearsal techniques and communication with our players. Pamela Tellejohn Hayes shared basic teaching techniques to solve common technique problems with our young string players.

Congratulations to our ASTA award recipients Christopher Memoli and Andrew Marks.

At our annual meeting, we voted in Ken Culver as next year's President and Margot Reavey as the President-Elect.  Three points were announced that we all should be reminded about:  
1.  Encourage the studio teachers that you know to join ASTA.  (It qualifies them not only for workshops for teachers and students, but makes them eligible for awards)
2.  Ideas for workshops and student enrichment activities are always welcome. Just contact someone on the board.  Our state chapter is also willing to fund master classes, guest conductors or relevant string activities at your school.

Thank you to Johnson Strings for providing wonderful string instruments for us to play at our sessions, and for providing the food and refreshments at our annual meeting. FInally, thank you to Chris Memoli, for putting together wonderful sessions for us.

Jane E. Ezbicki

Greetings to all of the string and orchestra teachers of Massachusetts! Anyone is welcome at our dinner meetings held monthly in Waltham at the Green Papaya, to share ideas or help out with special events or just to see what is going on in our organization.  More information of when and where the meetings are, can be obtained by calling me or sending me an email at ezbick@rcn.com. Please come and join us and I might even pick up your dinner tab! We need to fill the Western and Southeastern representative positions. Being on the MA-ASTA board is a wonderful opportunity to network and to seek professional development opportunities.

Meeting Schedule for Spring 2008
Green Papaya, 475 Winter St, Waltham
Thursday evenings, 6:30PM
March 27 (at Park Plaza Hotel, Boston)
April 17
June 19

Last Spring, our board organized a fiddle workshop for teachers. Taught by Donna Hebert, several teachers fiddled their “bow arms off” at the Johnson residence in Newton. Thank you, again, to Johnsons Strings for all of their help and sponsorship with everything we do.  This Fall, MA-ASTA supported the Carl Flesch Symposium held at the Longy School of Music. (See Clayton Hoener's article.)

The ASTA Summer Experience had its last summer this past July.  Started by Patrick Smith, former ASTA president and Amherst string director, this ASTA camp for students ran for many years, always with repeat students returning every summer.  Thank you to Andrea, for her leadership the last two years.

Thanks to Joan Ellersick for once again organizing the upcoming state level ASTA Solo Competition. More information about this year’s event will be provided by Joan and may also be requested by email.

Once again we are fortunate to have Past President, Chris Memoli, organizing the All-State Conference events for this year.  Working on this since last June, Chris has put together a great offering of sessions that will appeal to a wide range of string educators at the Park Plaza Hotel in Boston, March 27-29. Please bring your instruments to join us in the annual String Orchestra reading session.  If you forget your instrument, however, the Johnson String Instrument people always have instruments for us to borrow.  Most important of all events, please come to our annual MA-ASTA meeting and reception on Thursday, March 27, 6:30 PM.  This reception-meeting will be a great opportunity to network and listen to your colleagues, and make announcements about coming events around New England.  Whether we have taught for 30 years or are just starting out  on first job, the times that we can get together as string and orchestra specialists are very few and therefore, very valuable.

The 2008 ASTA National Conference is being held this year in Albuquerque, New Mexico, February 26-March 1, 2008. We are very proud of the six outstanding High School instrumentalists from Massachusetts that were accepted into the National High School Honors Orchestra:  Stephen Chang (viola), Katherine Griffith(flute), Jacob Klapholz(trumpet), Emily Eckart(horn), Evan Perry(viola), Gloria Park(cello) and Lydia Ding(violin). They will be performing at the Conference on Friday, February 29.  

Finally,I want to ask all of my colleagues in Massachusetts to offer their help, whether it be serving on the board, running workshops, asking teachers to enroll in ASTA  or simply make suggestions.  We appreciate the possibilities and potential of our large membership and everything we could do.  

SEE YOU AT ALL-STATE ----Jane Ezbicki