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Luverne Street Music reopens with strings instructor on staff

Lead Summary
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By
Lori Sorenson

Luverne Street Music reopened in June with some teachers and students, but this fall lessons will resume full time.
Board president Janine Papik said Covid-19 processes are in place to allow instruction to safely take place in the pandemic.
“Our board truly believes parents and students will be so ready to have some normalcy in their lives,” Papik said, “and these music lessons will be able to offer that.”
Among the lesson offerings will be cello and string instruction by Andrew Travers, Sioux Falls.
“Andrew is such a passionate, personal guy,” Papik said. “I'm excited to have students get connected with him.”
He studied cello performance at the University of Connecticut and he’s trained at the Music Institute of Chicago and at the Chicago Suzuki Institute.
His resumé includes professional involvement with the Las Vegas Philharmonic, the Northwest Iowa Symphony Orchestra and the Sioux City Symphony Orchestra.
He teaches cello and orchestra in Sioux Falls where he and his wife and sons live.
He said the short drive to Luverne is worth the experience of teaching music in the Carnegie building.
“I love old buildings made to last, and this Carnegie building is so wonderfully restored and kept functional,” Travers said.  “It began as a library, but I love that it’s now a temple of music.”
In a video interview Saturday, Papik asked Travers to answer several questions she felt the community would be interested in having him answer. Among them were:
 
What do you love about teaching violin, cello and strings in general?
I’ve always loved the sound of stringed instruments and I fell in love with the cello in my fifth-grade year.
What I love about teaching strings to others is that every single person is a different world all to themselves, and I have to discover how to make the world of music overlap with their world so that they understand it.
I find it’s universal that most students really love music in some way or another. So, connecting with each individual student is a joy and challenge, and the limitless uniqueness of teaching — never the same day, never the same student, always interesting and creative — is altogether wonderful.
 
How do you hope to bring your love of music to future string students here in the Luverne area?
As a teacher I am a sensei, I am a master, but I also need to lead by example. I intend to keep playing music as much as I can. And also sharing that music. I don’t believe that I could only be a performer. I must be a teacher as well. I must share this passion I have for music and creativity and expression. It is something I could not not do. Teaching is a part of who I am, and it’s important to share with others.
 
How do you think music has played a part in people’s lives during the pandemic?
For me personally music has allowed me to survive. I don’t know that I would have been able to get through some of the toughest parts of the sense of loss and the trauma of fear and pain and seeing others suffer.  …
Whenever I feel overwhelmed or sad, I can always pick up my cello … it can transport me out of that world and away from that trauma, if even for the time it takes to practice my cello. So I think that music is a way to survive and cope with this very, very different world we’re living in.
 
Luverne Street Music is open for students of all ages in all areas, from piano to voice, woodwinds, brass and percussion, in addition to recently added strings.
Staff can be reached at luvernestreetmusic@hotmail.com and 605-321-2055

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