Maribeth Frank

 

Growing Up

Our NVMTA Spotlight teacher for December is Maribeth Frank who grew up in New England. Both of her parents are musicians. Her mom is a pianist and a flutist and her dad is a jazz drummer. The constant music around her instilled a wide range of favorite musical genres. She has performed for all types of musicians including Leonard Bernstein, Augustin Hadelich (her favorite violinist), Ray Charles, Rod Stewart, Stevie Wonder (violin section at the Verizon Center), and Led Zeppelin, to name a few. Even with such a diverse music background, her overall love is classical music.

She has three main musical avenues in her life. First, she just started her 15th year teaching in FCPS as an elementary strings director.  Meeting new students each year and seeing the excitement in their eyes when they learn something new is rewarding. Second, she has a private violin/ viola studio. She says, “I love teaching students privately to prepare them to be successful on any level.”  Third, (she admits to being a bit selfish in this aspect),  she performs professionally with the Alexandria Symphony, Fairfax Symphony, Manassas Ballet, Washington Ballet, and other groups around the VA/DC/MD area. She says she always needs to have an outlet to nurture her musical endeavors.

 

Personal Interests

Maribeth loves animals, cooking, and sports. Currently, she has one cat, Francesca, who is a beautiful tortoiseshell rescue. Maribeth finds cooking calming and she loves to try new recipes. She confesses to being somewhat of a sports “nut”. Her parents met at the University of Wisconsin and as you can imagine during college football season, they were all about the “Badger Nation.” Since they lived in New England when she was younger, she is also all about the Patriots. She was a competitive swimmer and tennis player and loves watching the summer olympics.

Story

For a very short time in her life, Maribeth was a model. During this time, she was asked to bring several different “looks” to a photo shoot in order to develop a portfolio to take to “jobs”. She came to the shoot and was being photographed in several different types of outfits. One outfit she brought with her was an evening outfit (which is pictured). The evening outfit was from a friend. The violin, however, was a stroke of luck. Another model had brought it with her as a “prop” for her shoot. As Maribeth was walking back to the dressing room to change into the evening dress she saw her friend walk by with the violin. She said, “Hey, can I use your violin for a few moments?” “No problem,” she said and handed it to her.

Maribeth recounts, “I changed into the evening outfit and brought the violin and bow with me as a prop. The photographer took pictures and asked me to move my hands (both the hand that is holding the violin and the bow.) As you can imagine I was holding the violin and bow as I would naturally as a musician but unfortunately for the photographer, that did not make good visual sense. He made some comment about “models know nothing about how to use their hands.” I totally agreed since I was not truly a model. Anyway, that is how the picture you see came to be. It was my brief one year history in front of a Camera.”

NVMTA

Maribeth has entered private students in NVMTA events and chaired competitions sponsored by NVMTA. In her opinion, entering students in NVMTA programs is a vital part of preparation for students. Giving them goals, setting goals and achieving a goal of performing for an NVMTA sponsored event is critical to a student blossoming in their abilities to perform. She said, “I have always found these events and the feedback given from these events to be encouraging and uplifting to students. This ultimately furthers their understanding and abilities on their instrument.

For the last 11 years Maribeth has chaired the NVMTA Strings Concerto Competition. She says, “It is one of the joys of my life to support this event every year. The NV/DC/MD area is so blessed with incredible talent and even though it may take some work to put the event together I love to hear these students perform each year. Applauding all of their tremendous efforts makes it more than worthwhile. I hope that many NVMTA members will take the opportunity to support the plethora of events that NVMTA offers during the year.”

Advice

Maribeth’s advice to new members of NVMTA include the following:

  • Participate. Participation in a membership organization like NVMTA is what makes its engine run. Whether you enter your students in NVMTA events, volunteer or chair an NVMTA event, the more you participate the more you receive in return.
  • Strive to be your best. 
  • Participate and get to know others. 
  • Think outside the box. 
  • It’s ok to be uncomfortable, sometimes it leads to some tremendous discoveries.

Musical Goals

Maribeth started playing the violin at the age of 2 1/2. She said that if she could look back on her progression in violin, she would have been more diligent with her studies from about the age of 15 or so. She shared that she was naturally talented and probably rode that wave too long. Unless you are willing to put in the “hours” the talent won’t sustain you. She wished that she had been more aware and worked a bit harder during those years.

Maybe as a result of her early years, her musical goal is to always try to get better. The luxury of playing a musical instrument is that there is no end. We can always strive to get better. How boring it would be if we became “Perfect”. There would be nothing to strive for.

 

 

From the author: Be sure to read other NVMTA spotlight stories to get to know other teachers in the Northern Virginia area.