LETTER: Concert helps student learn

Editor,

My wife and I attended the Friday night Juniper Festival concert. We congratulate the participants and thank the Marie Eccles Foundation principals for the event – for its stunning quality and for their willingness to share their talents and resources to the betterment of the community and to help USU students.

The concert turned out to be one of the best learning laboratories I have ever encountered. From the program’s inception, it was obvious that a large proportion of the audience had never attended such an affair. There was clearly a lack of understanding of concert etiquette (which teachers could have prepared the students for in advance of the concert, it would seem). Students did not know when to applaud and when not to applaud and there was a disturbing amount of chatter – commented on by the performers, but handled charitably.

My impression was that the students around us more or less restrained themselves out of duty during the first pieces, during which there was a good deal of slouching and fidgeting. In the last number, the Mendelsohn octet, however, something of a miracle occurred – uniformly, students sat up, leaned forward, and listened. You know, I think that in the midst of that stunning, beautiful, energetic piece, they got it. It seemed to me that, at least in the case of the students around us, they began to understand and to relate to a new form of beauty and expression. To the extent that this is true, these students’ lives will never be the same. I don’t know what the budget of the Juniper Festival was, but what we saw around us was worth a million.

Ken Tingey