01 SC Mag 02-24

TEXT AND PHOTOS BY ALEISA SCHAT
organ from Philadelphia, the city
where Vander Hart attended Westminster
Seminary. Also on display is
a seven-string Russian guitar, an ode
to the years he spent teaching at several
Russian seminaries after the end
of the Cold War. During the 1990s and
early 2000s, Vander Hart spent regular
three-month stints in the country,
teaching courses in biblical studies,
church history and music.
“I spent 15 years as a teacher in Russia,
first in Moscow, then St. Petersburg,”
he said. “I would go there six
months out of a year.”
His time in Russia was the late
blooming of a seed planted decades
earlier, at Calvin College in Grand Rapids,
MI, where in his third year, Vander
Hart decided to prepare for seminary
and not earn a degree in music as he
originally intended.
“I decided I wanted to get to know
how to read the Bible better, so I studied
Greek and made Greek my major
and philosophy my submajor,” he said.
Music and mission would remain the
great themes of his life, and while he
changed his course of study in college,
Vander Hart continued to play in string
quartets and was concertmaster of the
college orchestra all four years he attended
Calvin.
“I was playing quartet three times a
week — I went through thousands of
pieces of literature,” he said.
The Russian guitar displayed in the
Vander Harts’ living room is poised
above a large concert harp, which itself
looms above the sofa. The house
is a veritable museum of instruments.
Adjacent to the living room is another
small room, the place Vander Hart
has taught private music lessons for
decades. The shelves are lined with
musical literature — folk songs, classical
pieces and “Twinkle Twinkle Little
Star” for the beginners.
“I start them in the first four weeks
without holding the bow, so there’s
no squeaks,” Vander Hart said. “They
pluck it like a guitar, and they learn
how to manipulate the right position
— to play the melody.”
This allows students — and their parents
— to bypass the phase of learning
that involves a good deal of dissonant
screeching and croaking.
“Then you just teach them how to
use the bow with no fingers,” Vander
Hart said. “You’re focusing on straight
bows, at exactly the right place at the
right speed. And then when you put the
two together, you don’t get squeaks.”
As a teacher, Vander Hart employs
the Suzuki method, a mid-20th-century
music curriculum and teaching philosophy
created by Japanese violinist and
pedagogue Shinichi Suzuki. Students
learn to play music through imitation
and repetition — much like a child acquires
language — rather than through
traditional methods that emphasize developing
musical techniques by playing
scales and other forms of technical
practice.
“It’s emphasizing playing beautiful
music — beautiful music to enjoy right
away,” Vander Hart said.
Prodigy
Vander Hart first picked up a violin
when he was 6 years old. His family had
moved to Denver from Teec Nos Pos,
AZ, where his father worked at a mission
among the Navajo established by
the Christian Reformed Church in the
early decades of the 20th century.
“I was home from the Christian
school, which was eight houses from
school, for lunch,” Vander Hart said. “A
man knocked on the door from Tabor
Music School, saying, ‘Little boy, would
you like to play a musical instrument?’”
Vander Hart said, “yes.” In fact, he
would like to play the trumpet.
“So, the man said, ‘Well, go call your
mom.’ My mom comes and says, ‘Get
back to the kitchen and eat your lunch
or you’ll be late for school,” Vander
Hart said. “All I know is it’s four days
later, I’m walking to Tabor Music
School with a violin in my hand.”
Vander Hart took to the instrument
right away. Eventually, he discovered
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