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RAVINIA’S STEANS MUSIC INSTITUTE
Fried leads a string quartet rehearsal during the summer of 2008 with Tessa Lark (second from right), who
studied with the violinist for eight years, including two at RSMI, before winning an Avery Fisher Career Grant.
–Tessa Lark, a longtime protégée of Miriam Fried’s and two-time RSMI alumna
“
She opened up my world to all these amazing new ideas on interpretation
…
she was blowing my mind with every sentence out of her mouth
.
”
she is a highly analytical thinker who
can bring clarity to complex musical
concepts.
In short, says Jonathan, who has
twice taught at RSMI himself and often
seen his mother in action, she has every
quality one would want in a teacher.
“Obviously, I’m not objective,” he admits.
“But I also think I happen to be right.”
Ask Fried about her approach to
teaching, and it quickly becomes clear
that it is grounded in her approach to
music. She sees the performer as an
intermediary between the composer and
the audience, and she believes the per-
former needs to understand the com-
poser’s intentions as much as possible
and communicate those with listeners.
It’s also important that an artist love the
music and possess the “generous spirit”
to help the audience to love it as well.
“My job is to illuminate the material in
the music,” she says, “and to figure out
how to help them [students] commu-
nicate that with passion, commitment,
and understanding. Just like in a speech,
if you don’t know what you are talking
about, don’t talk. But if you do know
what you are talking about, and you talk
in a monotone, it’s still not very good.”
Rather than emphasizing technique,
Fried talks about providing tools to the
young artists so they understand such
things as musical structure and harmo-
ny and can develop their own approach
to musical works. “I don’t believe that
a teacher should tell people how to
play the music,” she says. “That should
be the result of thinking—deep think-
ing—by the students, and they come to
a conclusion based on knowledge and
experience.”
For 28-year-old violinist Tessa Lark,
who in her early training was focused
on technical perfection, such an ap-
proach was startling. The 21 recipient
of a prestigious Avery Fisher Career
Grant calls Fried a “second mother,”
because she grew up so much during the
eight years she studied with the elder
performer, first privately at Indiana
University and later at the New England
Conservatory. “She opened up my world
to all these amazing new ideas on inter-
pretation and being well informed,” says
Lark, who spent two summers at RSMI,
in 2 and 28. “She was blowing
my mind with every sentence that was
coming out of her mouth.”
In one of her first sessions with
Fried, the teacher asked what Lark was
trying to do in a particular phrase from
Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, and the
young violinist responded that she didn’t
know. She remembers Fried telling her,
“You can tell me anything. I can hate
the idea that you have here. But ‘I don’t
know’ is never a good response.” The
lesson was evident: Always have a sound
conviction behind what you are doing.
A big part of Fried’s approach is
direct, hands-on mentoring. Each sum-
mer, she serves as second violinist for
a string quartet that she puts together
with three participants in the RSMI
program, rehearsing and performing
with them, and several of the other fac-
ulty members do the same. “We try to
have every kind of interaction possible,”
she says, “so we eat together, we work
together, and we try to interact socially
some. It’s a total package.”
Although there is much talk about
the differences between those who
come from before, during, and after
the millennial generation, Fried has
found that the musicians who come
to RSMI haven’t varied much over the
last quarter-century. Sure, some of the
demographics have shifted, and the way
that teachers are addressed has become
more informal, but those are minor
things. “In the fundamental ways that I
care about how they are—their talent,
accomplishment, and dedication to what
they do—they haven’t changed,” she
says.
At 1, Fried has reached an age when
many people are already retired, but
she remains as active and enthusias-
tic as ever. While she has reduced her
performing schedule, the violinist has
no plans to scale back her teaching or to
stop spending her summers at Ravinia.
And for his part, Ravinia President and
CEO Welz Kauffman says, “For as long
as Miriam wants to to be with us, we’re
honored to have her leading the RSMI
piano and strings program evergreen.”
“I don’t see myself stepping away,
and I’ll tell you why,” Fried adds. “First
of all, I love it. So, why would I stop
doing what I love? Secondly, I really feel
that spending time with young people
is a privilege. They’re great, especially
the ones I spend time with. It keeps me
young.”
Kyle MacMillan served as classical music critic
for the
Denver Post
from 2000 through 2011.
He currently freelances in Chicago, writing for
such publications and websites as the
Chicago
Sun-Times
,
Wall Street Journal
,
Opera News
, and
Classical Voice of North America
.
RUSSELL JENKINS/RAVINIA