Passion for string pays off

On Sunday evening, April 17, Sarah Harball will walk onstage at the University of Montana Music Recital Hall, bring her viola to her shoulder and position her bow for the opening strains of Georg Philipp Telemann's "Viola Concerto in G major."

The 16-year-old Kalispell musician will nod to the members of the String Orchestra of the Rockies as they prepare to accompany her in the 15-minute piece.

Then she will leave.

"When she stands on stage, she's lost," said Joan Renne, Harball's viola teacher of eight years. Harball prepares meticulously, Renne said, then lets her fingers take over as she melts into the music.

"She goes somewhere else. And afterward, she doesn't know what she's played. She also knows that's right - that's the way to be."

Renne recognizes what the String Orchestra of the Rockies recently confirmed by choosing her as their Solo String Competition winner: Sarah Harball is a truly remarkable musician.

But Renne takes it a step further.

"She's an artist already," Renne said. "An artist-violist, yes. But I consider her an artist."

In the Jan. 22 Missoula competition, Harball, then 15, was chosen over two other finalists - 24-year-old violist Anna Jesaitis from Bozeman and 20-year-old Beth Gebauer from Worland, Wyo.

She marked her 16th birthday last Wednesday.

It's a notable honor for any young musician, despite age. The biennial competition, advertised in a five-state region, is open to 14- through 24-year-olds.

In the first biennial competition and performance two years ago, a 17-year-old violinist from Sandpoint, Idaho, was the soloist. She now studies violin performance at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Fern Glass, a cellist with the String Orchestra of the Rockies, met Harball only at the competition but sensed similar potential in her.

"She immediately impressed me as a young woman far beyond her years in musical savvy and experience," Glass said.

"It was clear that she exhibited both a level of dedication and comprehension that most kids her age, let alone most musicians, never know."

By both women's accounts, Harball wears her accomplishment well - and humbly.

"She is very unpretentious, very sincere, very into what she is doing," Glass said. Her level of commitment to the viola and to quality performance impressed Glass.

Since putting a viola into Harball's 7-year-old hands and watching what she's done with it over the years, Renne has watched the girl's sincere devotion to the viola grow

A craving for recognition is notably absent.

"She's unflappable. She never brags, wouldn't touch it," Renne said.

"When she got into the finals of competition, she called me up and said, 'What did I do? Was I any good?'

"Ego doesn't get involved," Renne said. "She's very humble and serene, which is beautiful to see."

Harball had no illusions of getting this far.

As she prepared the Telemann piece, a Baroque work for which she had first learned the unornamented version in seventh grade, she began adding her own flourishes. She puzzled over what to do with the cadenza, but settled on her improvisations and moved on.

She rehearsed for two weeks with accompanist Kay Lund of Whitefish, then recorded and sent off the audition tape.

That, she figured would be the end of it.

"When I heard I won, I got excited," Harball said. "It wasn't like I was anticipating winning, but then I found out I won. Now I'm really stoked."

She was the third to play on Jan. 22. She didn't allow herself to listen to the first contestant nor the beginning of the second, but moved to the green room as the second musician finished. It was the Telemann viola concerto, the same piece Harball had prepared but with an entirely different interpretation.

As her fingers involuntarily flew along with the other performer in the presto-tempo fourth movement, she began to get nervous.

"She played very well," Harball said.

But then it was her turn.

"I went out on stage and took my bow and let the music take over after that," she said. Still, she remembered what was going through her head.

"I've got to get that chord in the fourth movement," she recalled. "Just watch my fingers and watch my bow."

In the end, Harball's assessment of her own performance echoed her reaction to the other violist - she played well.

"I've never been completely ecstatic with any performance," she said. "I never play as well as I do in practice. I'm still waiting for that moment."

That moment may arrive on April 17 in Missoula.

"There's no experience like playing with a string orchestra," Harball said, the excitement dancing in her eyes. "I'm sure it's going to be one of the best musical experiences of my life."

That drive for perfection marks Harball's connection with music.

"I'm pretty demanding," she said.

"My dad keeps calling me a perfectionist. But if I get one thing accomplished [in a session], even if I get a shift right, or a bow stroke," it's enough, she said.

How long can that take?

"I usually break at two-and-a-half hours."

The sophomore carries that dedication to her Expository Speaking events for the Flathead High speech team, to her studies which now involve International Baccalaureate certificate courses, to her practice and performances with the Celtic Cross Dancers, and to orchestra performance under conductor Sherry Simmons.

She played in the All-Northwest Festival Orchestra in Bellevue, Wash., a couple of weeks ago, where she was surrounded by the best high school musicians in the region.

"It blew me away. There were 200 musicians in the orchestra and all were top-level," she said.

"I was pretty much drowning in talent."

Harball was nurtured in an environment of talent.

Her mother, Claire Harball, plays piano and sings, joining the Glacier Chorale at one point. Her 18-year-old sister, Elizabeth, plays violin and recently picked up guitar. Her father, Kalispell City Attorney Charles Harball, just enjoys them all.

From the moment Renne introduced her then-piano student to the viola - the big sister to a violin and little sister to a cello - "I absolutely loved it," Sarah Harball said.

Its muted nuances, the understated artistry it requires, but the power it holds to change the key of a piece jive perfectly with Harball's personality .

Apt viola students are hard to find, Renne said, but are a treasure.

"Any problem with a violin is magnified a hundred times," she said, but it "is the most beautiful when you do get it. It doesn't have the solo line, it can't soar above the orchestra. It's the middle voice. Sarah loves that."

She's been adjudicated by some of the best - Philip Ying of the Ying Quartet and Paul Coletti, head of UCLA's string department - and relished their critiques.

"They've got to tell me how to get better," she insisted.

Now that she's entered a new level with her music experience, it's critical.

"This was my first competition," she said. "I just wanted to get my feet wet, and I ended up taking the whole plunge."

If anyone can survive the dunking, Renne is confident that her student can. Harball has the artistic temperament to work like a madwoman, the humility to be teachable and the tenacity to demand the best from herself and from her teacher.

What is it in Harball that brings these qualities forward?

"An incredible focus and steadfastness," she said, insisting that Harball taught Renne how to teach her own student.

"You give her an idea and she just sits with it and focuses on it, thinks about it … She's never flighty and never frustrated," Renne said. "She's just really deep and strong, and you don't find many kids that way."

Renne finds Harball's analytical method and refusal to give up until she's mastered something, "never annoying," but rather a wonderful trait

"She has the makings for a professional musician - the ability to work, a one-track mind when you need it. She can go anywhere she likes. She has an option, and she can choose it if she likes," Renne said.

"It kind of chooses you and then you can choose it if you like."

Harball said she's keeping her options open for now - at least until after the Missoula performance.

"I'm just going into it for the experience," Harball said.

"I just want to go up and have fun - to play it with passion."

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com