LIVE-IN LEARNING FOR CONNIES

Con Professor Couple Takes in Violin Students

For many students, the idea of living with onešs Calculus professor or Biology teaching assistant is all but terrifying. For some Oberlin Conservatory students, living with an esteemed music pedagogue is now routine. For the last sixteen years Roland Vamos, Professor of Violin and Viola, and Almita Vamos, Professor of Violin, have established a tradition of boarding a select group of students, teaching them, guiding them, and coaching them for far more than an hour or two a week.

The study of classical music, and particularly classical violin, is a most intense and competitive pursuit. To devote their lives to music, premiere violinists must find excellent teachers early on. For many students, though, traveling to study with teachers like the Vamoses is not feasible. Sixteen years ago, two young women wanted so much to study with Mrs. Vamos that she found herself offering to let them both live at her house for the year. Mr. Vamos said, "In the past, it was expected that the great teachers take students into their home. It was tradition." Mrs. Vamos continued, "As far as we know, wešre the only teachers doing this right now."

Having had three children, the Vamoses were familiar with parenting, and, when they began opening their home to students, they did it in great part to expand their role as parents. As their own children were growing older and moving out, they were able to bring in new young children. Many of the Vamoses live-in students began living with them during high school, making it necessary for the Vamoses to become their legal guardians so the students could attend area high schools. But graduation from high school does not mean severing ties to the Vamoses. Often students stay with Vamoses even through college. A handful of students have lived with the teachers for five and six years.

Certainly these living arrangements have provided complications for the busy lives of Mr. and Mrs. Vamos, and just as certainly, the Vamoses have more than their share of stories. They might start with stories of students fighting with each other at all hours and forging notes to high school teachers and administrators. The couple can also tell tales of more serious rule-breaking: students punching small holes in walls, and even building bombs in the basement. With a conspiratorial nod, Mrs. Vamos said, "The best stories, of course, are the ones we canšt tell."

The general trend, though, is one of positive growth, both musically and personally, for all of the students who have spent time living in the Vamos house. Having formed bonds as close as those of any family, former boarders keep in close contact with Mr. and Mrs. Vamos and, most committedly, with each other. Last year, a former student returned to Ohio from Japan for her wedding; she wanted to marry here so her second family, the Vamoses, their children and their student wards could all attend her wedding. The bonds formed in the Vamos house compete even with blood bonds.

In sixteen years, a number of constants have developed at the Vamos house. The first student to live with Vamoses brought with her, as a gift for her new teachers, a cat. Named Fang soon after, the cat continues to live in the Vamos house, making him, as their longest ever tenant. Another constant deals with the cultural diversity created by the bringing together of so many students, many internationals, into one home. As a means of creating a sense of "family" the Vamoses work to accommodate the religious and cultural needs of all of their students, expanding the horizons and understandings of all. "The life of the artist, the musician, is so intensely different than any other," Mrs. Vamos said, stressing the need for extra empathy at all times.

With students coming and going in an overlapping fashion, their extended musical family has a continuous, seamless feel, one they try to foster and encourage. In an intensively competitive field such as music, having strong friendships is relaxing and fortifying, Mrs. Vamos suggests.The Vamoses go above and beyond in their attempts to create a home atmosphere that promotes the development of these friendships in addition to the expected and prescribed development of musicianship.