In looking at strings today, John Kuzmich, Jr. is very concerned with the focus of string music education. Do music educators insure knowledge and understanding of different styles and periods of music in both classical and popular music? Are music educators only interested in classical music performance skills of 200 years (1700 to 1900) of Western European music? Do music educators create musicians/citizens who can develop their talents for the demands of the future? Are music educators mainly focused only on music festivals and contests? Do music educators instill positive aesthetics enabling students to become hardy consumers of quality music for the rest of their lives? There are signs of both hope and harm on the horizon of string education, which if left unaddressed, may prove to be the undoing of public school string education. In the Fall, 1997 ASTA Journal article entitled, "String Education: The Stepchild of American Music Education," Dr. Carmille M. Smith presented some notable statistics: "Approximately 84 percent of America's school districts offer no string education, lower socio-economic level children have limited access to public school string education, and children in metropolitan and rural school districts are least likely to receive string education." It is John Kuzmich's opinion that "we can't let string education slowly dwindle away, nor can we expect string education to continue the way it is; music of 200-year-old white European men played by economically-advantaged suburbanites."

The Suzuki string movement in the U.S.A. began in the 1960's when string education was in a perilous situation. New interest and development occurred in string education but its appeal is not universal in that Suzuki instruction is very expensive and not accessible to all. John has an assertive plan about how to supplement string education to new horizons without altering mainstream string education. Through sound synthesis of electrified strings with computer technology and by utilizing jazz education teaching techniques with "wire" choir and contemporary music ensembles and combos, more students will be attracted to a repertory of contemporary music based on the significant evolution of jazz music of the past 100+ years with such musical genres as dixieland, swing, bebop, Latin, rock, fusion, Blues and others along with bluegrass and country fiddle playing. String education in the 21^st century cannot so blatantly avoid the rich cultural/ music heritage of contemporary popular music, especially with its creative improvisational aspects found primarily in jazz, America's very first Art form.

MENC national music standards clearly address creating music beyond performance by also focusing attention on composing/arranging and improvisation. All three ingredients are essential to MENC music standards for string players. And with the Zeta music family of electrified string instruments, it is very possible to incorporate all three aspects of creating music within the present day public school string music curriculum. John clearly advocates the "how to" techniques of doing this in his string music/technology/jazz education clinics within a traditional public school curriculum setting.

Unique Professional Background

Below are some professional background experiences that helped John become a dynamic class room teacher. Most notably, John has become a music educator with 33+ uniquely different years of music training, teaching experiences and expertise. Since the 1960's, he has become involved many different aspects of the instrumental music education profession.

• Initially, John was a marching band expert. But over a period of time, his marching band show designs evolved from hand to computer technology.
  
  
• In the 1970's, John used "Wire" choir with amplified strings with his string students. Originally, all amplification was done using harmonica ceramic pickups at $5.00 a unit. Now with Zeta technology, John and his daughter, "Princess Reva," provide a unique two-person clinic with the technology of using both analog electrified sounds with special effects process such as wah wah pedal, harmonizers, phrase samplers, distortion pedals and more with MIDI synthesis and computer music technology in a jazz education setting.
  
  
• Computer music assisted instruction has evolved significantly since John first began using it in the mid-1970's with Apple IIe computers in ear training and music theory applications. Today, Pentium III computers offer many innovative software applications such as automatic accompaniment generators for improvisation, transcribing solos, music scanning published scores, digital-audio recording, music engraving and other creative teaching applications. And through MIDI technology inherent in Zeta string instruments, students can creatively interact with these computer music software applications.
  
  
• For eight years, John was a coordinator of music for his school district. During this period of time, John quickly became interested in teacher in-service instruction and curriculum design for his faculty. Today John has opened up a permanent technology center in Denver with 16 computer workstations with six different music technology teacher in-service classes for music educators with college credits offered by the Colorado School of Mines. For more info, please visit: http://www.kuzmich.com/handouts/mines.html
  
  
• Web development. The Internet is literary changing the way we live and particularly how businesses and education are operating and developing. John has become a webmaster for the purpose of promoting music education and how students and teachers can better promote their careers in a changing world. Not only is John developing creative school web pages at: http://204.98.1.2/middle/carmody/computers/, but he now has a seven-part web development series of articles as part of his technology column in the School Band & Orchestra journal. The first two installments are also published on-line on the Internet at:



1. January, 2000 issue: Web Basics: http://www.sbomagazine.com/arch/jan2000/report.htm

2. 2002 Midwest Band & Orchestra Conference Electrified Strings Handouts: It's a Digital World: Rule It By Modernizing String Ensembles With Electric Instruments, Pickups, MIDI Synthesis and Published Charts

3. http://www.kuzmich.com/articles/Article Strings.html: Contemporary String Education: Modernizing with Electric Instruments
   
   
4. Visit http://www.kuzmich.com/articles.html for 60+ feature articles in the School Band & Orchestra journal include MP3, video streaming, HTML cleanup, WYSIWYG web designing, OCR for web pages and more.
   
   
• John wrote his first article for The Instrumentalist on combo/improvisation concepts in 1973. Since then, he has published 400+ articles in just about every major music education journal. Representative national and international music education journals include: Music Educators Journal, The Instrumentalist, Jazz Educators Journal, down beat, School Band & Orchestra, Selmer Bandwagon, American Suzuki Journal, Strings Magazine and School Musician.
  
  
• John has also had unique professional experiences as a senior editor of three prestigious music educator journals for 17+ years: Jazz Educators Journal for the International Association of Jazz Educators, The Instrumentalist and the American Suzuki Journal for the American Suzuki Association. He presently maintains three on-going technology oriented columns.
  
  
  1. "Survey of New Teaching Materials" which began in 1975 and now has nearly 1,000 jazz education teaching materials reviewed.
  2. "Watch Out" began in 1992 with feature articles on contemporary string education and computer technology. Featured have been such music groups as Turtle Island String Quartet and the Modern String Quartet as well as contemporary string players as Mark O'Connor, Darol Anger and others.
  3. A technology column in the School Band & Orchestra began in 1998. Now many of this past installments are posted on-line at: http://www.sbomagazine.com/sbopast.htm
     
     
• Jazz education has always been fundamental to John in motivating students to greater musicality not only because of contemporary musical styles of jazz, but because improvisation is fundamental to instantaneous musicianship. When John began is public school teaching career in 1966, he was an oboe major. Quickly, he learn the tenor saxophone and became actively involved with jazz education. In the 1970's, he expanded jazz education to include strings with combos and "wire" choirs. Now in the 21^st century, John and his workshop partner, his daughter "Princess Reva," put together innovative string education revolution through their workshops consisting of music technology, sound synthesis and jazz education techniques.

The Future of the Zeta String Education Revolution!

Unfortunately, college music education training programs are not necessarily improving upon their string teacher curriculums. In the Fall, 1997 issue of the ASTA Journal, Dr. Robert Gillespie and Dr. Donald Hamann posed some thought-provoking implications from the results of their "Survey on the Status of Orchestra Instruction in the Public School". They stated that "colleges and universities need to evaluate the quality of their string teacher preparation because less than the majority of teachers rated the training for teaching strings between adequate and excellent."

The future of John Kuzmich's string workshop is based on his 40+ years of on-going music in-service training with computer technology, sound synthesis and jazz education that has been described above. John has expanded his workshops to Europe and soon to Australia. And now with Princess Reva, there is such a natural blending of John's expertise and experiences with his daughter's creative music education experiences culminating at the University of North Texas where she is a senior applied violin major taking an abundance of jazz theory and improvisation courses. And with Zeta's patented string technology, the string education revolution has begun with John and Reva Kuzmich! For more information about John Kuzmich, Jr. and his daughter, "Princess Reva," please visit the following URL: http://www.kuzmich.com, http://www.kuzmich.com/clinics , http://www.kuzmich.com/reva.html and http://www.zetamusic.com/friends/display.asp?id=113