Greenfield Recorder: Saturday, September 01, 2007
GREENFIELD -- She's 26, she's a professional trombone player and she's ready to build a new band and music program at the Greenfield Middle School.

Ariel Templeton Suzuki spent her first official day at GMS on Thursday, and school begins next Tuesday.

''I want to do what all my teachers did for me,'' Suzuki said during an interview in the GMS band room. ''I want to inspire.'' Suzuki is a graduate of the LaGuardia High School for Music, Art and the Performing Arts in New York City. That is the high school on which the movie ''Fame'' was based.

''It is right across the street from Julliard, where I would hang out every day after school,'' she said. After high school, she came to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst for her bachelor's and master's degrees. ''I came because of Dave Sporny,'' she said of the UMass professor and trombone legend and longtime Interlochen Arts Academy instructor. ''I met my husband (Yasu Suzuki is a bassist) there and we love the area, so we decided to stay.''

Before coming to Greenfield, Suzuki was an adjunct faculty member at Holyoke Community College and at the Community Music School in Springfield. She was a substitute teacher in several area towns and has taught private lessons out of Jerry's Music in South Hadley.

''I've been teaching all over the place, but I have been living out of my car,'' she said. ''I'm relieved to have one place to be. I'm ready for this.'' Paul J. Calcari, director of music for the Greenfield schools, said he could not be more pleased with Suzuki's hiring.

''I cannot tell you how happy we are to have Ariel here,'' Calcari said Thursday. ''These past couple of years have been very difficult. This is an extremely positive change. Band is back and it is back in a big way.

''And it is an honor to have a musician of Ariel's caliber teaching in our schools. She is a real feather in our cap.''

Parents of prospective band students will get the chance to meet Suzuki and other GMS teachers during First Day activities at the school Tuesday. A letter has been sent home to incoming GMS students with a schedule for that day.

On Sept. 13, Calcari and Suzuki will host representatives from Jerry's Music, who will bring instruments for students to try and to rent. That event will be at 7 p.m. at the middle school. The school has a very limited number of instruments for student use. Many beginning students, Calcari said, rent an instrument.

''What we really need is for people to look in their closets and dig out those instruments that maybe the kids played a few years ago and donate them to the middle school,'' Calcari said. ''It's OK if they need a little work. We can take care of that. What we need are instruments. I don't want anyone to not play simply because they do not have an instrument.''

Calcari can be reached at Greenfield High School at 772-1350 Ext. 113.