Everywhere, All The Time

I had no idea if I had any musical talent at all when I was in fourth grade. But one day, a string quintet came over from the high school – and I was intrigued.

I knew playing violin would be a problem – people would beat me up. And the bass looked like an awful lot of instrument to haul around. So I settled on the cello.

And I played through the next eight years, from fourth grade till graduation (enter through college, and let’s be honest, I can still crank out a few tunes).

The Jamestown schools had a pretty big orchestra program:  five elementary schools, the junior high, and the high school. The program involved everyone from 10-year-old beginners sawing away on half size violin, all the way up to the occasional musical prodigy who went off to major in music.

And the whole thing was run by one teacher – Donna Nannenga. 

I was a pretty obnoxious teenager – certainly too much so to be impressed by that at the time. But over the years, as I’ve seen, what goes into teaching – and especially into teaching music, one of the more complicated disciplines – I’ve retrospectively had my mind blown.

In my case? I went from playing “Blue Bells of Scotland“ in fourth grade, to second chair at Alls State orchestra my senior year. And she was the only teacher – really, just about the only formal musical training – I had until I was 18.

And I was just one of what had to have been between 70 and 100 kids in the orchestra program at any given time, from age 10 through 18. 

And, of course, it was from learning the cello that I was able to teach myself guitar, bass, mandolin, and everything else I’ve been able to crank out a tune on over the years.

And I was far from the only one:

Donna Nannenga teaches violin, viola and cello at James River Correctional Center. She taught 75 students at the prison from 2002-15 when she stopped counting and estimates the number is now closer to 100.

“Once a teacher, always a teacher,” Nannenga said.

Some of her students were in school choirs, bands or orchestras while others have no musical background at all, she said. Her goal is for the student to reach a high school orchestra level for string instruments, she said.

“I take them no matter what kind of musical background they have,” she said. “I teach them just like I did my students in school with the same books and materials.”

As happens so often in life, I was just wondering how she was doing the other day, when I got the news that she’d passed away. I always wanted to thank her.

I guess I need to stop waiting on these things.