Urbana High music teacher captures students' imaginations
By Amy F. Reiter
Sunday November 2, 2008
Robin Scholz
Tamra Gingold works with a strings music class at Leal school in Urbana.
URBANA – Tamra Gingold's violin is at her shoulder, and she's playing skillfully as two high schoolers follow along, watching her lead as they keep the rhythm on their own violins.
Gingold's violin – inherited from her grandfather – is named Dvorak, after her favorite composer, and the moment itself feels a little classical, a little like a Hallmark card of a perfect teaching moment.
Except Gingold is playing "Purple Haze" by Jimi Hendrix, the music rocking off the walls of her little office at Urbana High School.
When you're a student of Gingold's, playing a string instrument can mean learning classical music – sophomore Laura Orozco's favorite – or it can mean playing the latest Alicia Keys song, as freshman Kamiya Gable practiced on Tuesday. Even hip-hop is in the Gingold violin vocabulary.
"She likes to open our minds up to a lot of different kinds of music," Orozco said.
"She brings fun to it. It's not just boring and strict," Gable said. "She has a creative mind, and that's what I love. ... She's one of the teachers who's there to help. She wants you to get better."
Perhaps that's why Urbana's string program has grown in leaps and bows ... er, bounds. In fifth grade alone, about 75 students are taking lessons during school, Gingold said.
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