The family that plays together stays in tune together

CHAMPAIGN – University of Illinois civil engineering Professor Keith Hjelmstad would be happy to play his violin alone at home. Which he sometimes does.

Often, though, he's rehearsing with his wife, Kara, who plays violin, and their three children, who have all followed in their parents' finger-steps by learning the same instrument.

"I'm pretty insistent that they take it up – not that I want them to become professional violinists, but I think it's a great discipline," Keith said. "It gives them something challenging to do at a young age. They have to devote a lot of focus, energy and time to it. I think it's a valuable educational tool in rearing children."

David, 15, Kirsten, 12, and Annika, 10, studied violin with Anne Heiles in Urbana. David and Kirsten play in their school orchestras, at University High School and Franklin Middle School, respectively. And David is a member of the East Central Illinois Youth Orchestra and Parkland Community Orchestra, of which his father is concertmaster.

In February, all five Hjelmstads took the stage with the Parkland orchestra to perform in concert. Having his family play with the ensemble at least once had been a dream of Keith's.

"He asked if I would mind if they would play, and it was fine with me," said Jack Ranney, conductor. "He's been a dependable member of the orchestra and one of those who has been with us for a long time."

The orchestra and the Parkland Community Concert Band will present their final concert of the season at 7 p.m. Monday. (Please see sidebar.) Keith and David Hjelmstad will participate in that – the last Parkland orchestra concert for any Hjelmstad.

The Hjelmstads have sold their home in Champaign and will move in early June to Phoenix. Keith will start a new job as university vice president and dean of the College of Technology and Innovation of Arizona State University at the Polytechnic Campus at Mesa.

Keith moved here in 1983 as a professor with a doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley, thinking the UI job would be his first and only one. He said he loves Champaign-Urbana and the university, but the Arizona job was an opportunity too good to pass up.

"It's a great next chapter in my professional life," he said.

As for his musical life, he joined the Parkland orchestra 25 years ago after the wife of one of his new colleagues at the UI asked if he would be interested in playing. For the past nine years, he has been the Parkland Community Orchestra concertmaster, after having been co-concertmaster.

He began studying the violin in fourth grade and continued through high school and Colorado State University, where he had a music scholarship even though he majored in engineering. While at Colorado State, he performed in the university orchestra and Fort Collins Symphony and took private lessons from a faculty member.

He doesn't think it odd for an engineer to be a musician.

"One of the statistics I like to trot out about the UI is there are often more members in the Marching Illini from engineering than from any other college," he said. "There's a theory as to why that might be true. Some people like to claim there's a connection between math and music, which there might well be. I think engineering draws talented and smart kids who are involved in lots of stuff."

(Peter Griffin, director of the Marching Illini, said the majority of the band's members fluctuated from year to year between music and engineering majors, but the last two years, music majors have made up the majority, with engineering coming in second.)

Keith said that playing music exercises a part of his brain that he doesn't otherwise use. "It's a relaxation, it's enjoyment. It does a lot of things for me."

Like her husband, Kara Hjelmstad began taking violin lessons when she was a fourth-grader. She moved here 16 years ago and played in the Parkland orchestra for a couple of years before dropping out to focus on her family. Her real passion is singing; for the last four years, she has sung with the UI Oratorio Society. She also has been teaching the last eight years at Barkstall Elementary School.

As a family, the Hjelmstads have performed together as a chamber group for various events at their church, First Mennonite in Urbana. When they come together to play publicly, the family draws a lot of compliments, Keith said.

"It must be a very unusual thing, because any time we play together, people comment on how unusual and wonderful it is, and how close we must be as a family," he said. "I'm sure we argue and fight like anybody else, but when we play music we transcend all that."

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