Front Royal has a beautiful thing and one thing it seems to be missing is the arts

Not any more.

The Mountain View Music Association at 217 Main Street is changing that! “We want to be able to give music to anybody regardless of whether they can afford it or not,” said co-founder Larissa Fedoryka at the Spring Benefit Concert and Auction held last Saturday evening to benefit the scholarship fund. “But at the same time teachers have to make a living,” she noted, urging people to bid generously in the silent auction.

Mountain View opened in September 2020, and its growth has been phenomenal. The demand for affordable classical music lessons for children is strong and growing. In addition to individual studios for lessons, the open space has been used for lectures, swing dances, and even a senior prom.

The Mountain View Recital Room has almost perfect acoustics – it is almost a perfect mathematical “Golden Rectangle”. The ratio of width and length and height of the space was designed intentionally to be a “Shoebox Theatre”. There are no acoustical treatments on the wall, yet there is no deconstructive sound that would cause reverberations.

The room was packed, but the sound was perfect. Where else but here could you sit ten feet away from the performers and enjoy two hours of such delights as Clementi’s Trio for Piano, Violin, and Cello, Carl Czerny’s Sonatina in C, and a solo flute Sonata by C.P.E. Bach?

Click the image to listen to portions of the concert from their Facebook page.

The performers were teachers at Mountain View, and they are professionals. Some of them are: Pianist Karena Tapsak, the co-founder of Mountain View, is a former adjunct professor at Bloomsburg University; Sheila DuMont is a Doctoral Candidate in the flute at Shenandoah University; Larissa Fedoryka has a Doctorate of Musical Arts from the University of California Santa Barbara; violinist Eli Thomas was concertmaster of the Shenandoah Conservatory’s orchestra and won the 2014 Virginia Music Teachers Association concerto competition.

Is music important in a child’s life? In her closing remarks, Larissa noted “My mom gave us music and it was a way of life. It formed our souls and played an influential part in how we encountered life and how we encountered God.”

Classes are held six days a week; lessons are available in piano, flute, violin, and more. Contact Mountain View Music at 217 E. Main Street, Front Royal, VA 22630 for more information.

Even though the concert is over, it’s not too late to make a donation to the Mountain View Music Association scholarship fund.

www.MountainViewMusic.org

Town Talk: A conversation with Karena Tapsak and Larissa Fedoryka – Mountain View Music