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to students at Sioux Center Christian<br />
School before and after school.<br />
“So, that began this program here. I<br />
didn’t go back into missionary work,”<br />
he said. “I felt I had more talent in<br />
teaching violin than I did in preaching.<br />
And yet, I used all my seminary<br />
training as much as I could in teaching<br />
music.”<br />
After some early resistance, Vander<br />
Hart’s school orchestra program became<br />
well-established, and today the<br />
grade school supplies well-trained<br />
string players for high school orchestra’s<br />
across the region.<br />
“Eventually, we had enough good<br />
kids that in ’72, we started what we now<br />
call the Northwest Iowa Symphony Orchestra,”<br />
he said.<br />
NISO has doubled in size since then,<br />
and it includes around 80 talented musicians<br />
from across the tri-state region.<br />
Vander Hart still plays with the Sioux<br />
Center-based orchestra, which offers<br />
regular concerts at the B.J. Haan Auditorium<br />
on Dordt University’s campus.<br />
String Center<br />
Vander Hart retired from full-time<br />
teaching more than two decades ago,<br />
but his days remain full of music. He<br />
teaches a course in string pedagogy at<br />
Northwestern College in Orange City<br />
every other year, and along with tuning<br />
dozens of pianos a year, Vander Hart<br />
maintains a rigorous schedule of teaching<br />
private lessons.<br />
“Violin has a way of teaching stuff<br />
about music that you can’t quite as easily<br />
teach on other instruments. String<br />
players are constantly thinking about<br />
being in tune,” he said. “It’s not like a<br />
piano — already tuned for you — or like<br />
pushing a button on a brass or a woodwind.<br />
So, you’re going to be a better<br />
singer because you’re thinking about<br />
your pitch all the time.”<br />
Vander Hart also keeps himself busy<br />
with the business he founded in 1966<br />
and operates out of his historic home.<br />
“The Sioux County String Center is<br />
my business — I have the permit up on<br />
the wall,” he said.<br />
In his teaching studio, along with<br />
lesson books devoted to the Suzuki<br />
method and charts explaining the<br />
mathematics of musical harmony,<br />
there is a wall of small tools used in<br />
the repair and construction of string<br />
instruments.<br />
“In eighth grade, the first book I ever<br />
bought that I paid for with my own<br />
money was a book called ‘Violin Making<br />
as it Was and Is,’ a republication of<br />
a book of 1850 from England,” Vander<br />
Hart said. “I learned a lot about how to<br />
repair things from that.”<br />
He continued his training in adulthood,<br />
making frequent visits to the<br />
Sioux City violin shop owned by Harold<br />
A. Wall, a specialist in violin repair.<br />
Eventually, Vander Hart became<br />
the area’s only self-taught luthier, the<br />
term for a craftsman that specializes<br />
in building, restoring and repairing<br />
stringed instruments.<br />
“I serve eight schools in the area, and<br />
then I serve anybody else who needs<br />
string things,” he said.<br />
When a violin gets inadvertently<br />
If you play in tune, the violin sings. If you play out of tune, it won’t.’<br />
that’s not the reason.’” — GARY VANDER HART MUSIC TEACHER<br />
SPRING 2<strong>02</strong>4 | <strong>SC</strong> MAGAZINE 27
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