MANAGING EDITOR

VAN — Montclaire String Quartet cellist Andrea Di Gregorio scanned the Van Junior-Senior High School gymnasium for a student volunteer.

Considering students from the host school were joined by students from Van and Wharton elementary schools, she had plenty from which to choose.

Di Gregorio eventually picked Van Elementary School fourth-grader Emma Martin from the crowd of more than 500 administrators, teachers and students.

You should have seen the look on her face as she made her way from the bleachers to the floor.

“Oh my gosh,” Martin said afterward, recalling her thoughts from the moment she was preparing to replace violist Sandra Armstrong Groce and play with Di Gregorio, violinist Amelia Chan and violinist Luigi Peracchia for that part of their performance.

With Groce coaching her from behind, Martin cradled the viola under her chin and performed admirably considering her lack of experience and the size of the audience.

“I was nervous,” Martin said later, “but it was fun.”

The Montclaire String Quartet was a hit with students — and administrators and teachers, for that matter — of all ages last Wednesday.

“I liked the music,” Van Elementary School first-grader Katelyn Garretson said. “It was pretty. The people who were playing it were silly. They were funny. I liked the pirate part the best.”

The program was geared toward the elementary-aged students. The quartet members put on a show in which they not only played their instruments but also acted out roles — Di Gregorio once was a zombie and Peracchia once was a pirate, for example — to tell a story.

“I liked how they did all of the acting,” Martin said. “They were different people. (Groce) imagined her friends as all of the people she met (on her make-believe adventures). I liked how the music was. It was really, really good.”

The man responsible for bringing the Montclaire String Quartet to Pond Fork is Van Elementary School Principal Kirk King, whose fun-filled activities make me want to return to kindergarten like Adam Sandler in “Billy Madison.”

King applied for and received a $150 grant from Charleston’s Clay Center, where his wife, Betty, is the director of education.

“You have to use the connections you have,” King said proudly. “The grant was specifically geared to have the resident quartet come into the building and put on an educational show.

“There are a couple of reasons I pursued it. First, I am a former music instructor. We haven’t had music in the Pond Fork area for a couple of years. It was an opportunity to bring some instrumental music to the students.

“We try to do as much as we can to bring those kind of activities to the kids so they can experience different things that they might not experience otherwise.”

A community member who wants to remain anonymous donated another $150, which gave King the $300 he needed to pay the Montclaire String Quartet to perform.

“It was a free concert to the students,” King said.

He originally planned to have the quartet perform at his school but ultimately decided to share the experience with the other Pond Fork schools.

King spoke with Van Junior-Senior High School Principal Kathryn Moore and Wharton Elementary School Principal David Startzel, and “they were receptive to the idea,” he said. “So, we decided to combine Pond Fork and give it a shot. It turned out to be very positive.”

The Montclaire String Quartet is in its 16th year in residence with the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra.

One of its missions is to bring classical music to children throughout the Mountain State. The quartet plays between 40 and 60 school programs each year.

Its performances, like the one at Van Junior-Senior High School last week, “are very wholistic,” King said. “They gave us a music lesson, a geography lesson, a literature lesson and a history lesson. They not only took us throughout the United States but also took us to England.”

As Martin and other students learned firsthand, “it was an interactive program,” King said. “They didn’t just come and say, ‘OK, we are here to play for you. Sit back and enjoy.’ They got them involved in the performance.

“The kids definitely had a good time,” he added. “They are still talking about it. Hopefully, it will stir an interest and our strings program will grow a little. Maybe they will be encouraged to attend some more symphony performances.”

Contact Jacob Messer at jacobmesser@coalvalleynews.com and 369-1165 or 785-8951.