May 14, 2004 at 2:30 AM

Again, my lesson with Valerie blew my mind. My frog changes at the tip weren't making her happy, so she broke the movement down into several parts---"elbow is still here, then moves forward here, then stays still while the forearm extends, watch the angle of your wrist...."etc. I'm thinking, how does she know this? Does she teach this to her little students?

Then I saw a third-grader of hers tonight play Bartok's Romanian Dances. With a _really_ good bow arm. In fact, all of her students, down to pre-schoolers, had solid bow arms. After seeing so many hundreds of mediocre college recitals, watching these kids was like watching water flowing upwards.