Music ambassador: violinist gives year to college program

Though Wai Mizutani has been a musician since age 5, it wasn’t until he moved to  Northwest Montana that he could play his violin with a truly joyful heart.

Music instruction felt like “intensive torture” to Mizutani while he was growing up in China. He then made a workmanlike procession through his music education and performance careers. 

“It wasn’t until I came to this valley that I started seeing that music had a purpose,” Mizutani said. “Before I was trained to teach and perform like it was a job, and almost 34 years later, I find the violin joyful to play. Before I always thought about how to quit this thing.”

Mizutani has been in the Flathead Valley for seven years, and has been sharing his newfound passion for music with Flathead Valley Community College students as an adjunct instructor for the past year and a half. 

And starting with the upcoming fall semester, he’ll be working on a one-year temporary professional contract. He will still be teaching, but also recruiting for the music program, performing, assisting in fundraising for the FVCC Foundation through performance, and strengthening partnerships with four-year universities.

His new position is meant to build on the school’s current music curriculum and explore how best to take the music program into the future. 

Three FVCC students who have worked one-on-one with Mizutani are going on to four-year colleges to major in music. He believes that personal attention helps give students direction as well as the preparation they need for success in a larger setting.

Other adjunct professors of music at FVCC include Glacier Symphony and Chorale music director John Zoltek, composer Craig Naylor and guitarist Steve Eckels.

“We’ve created a unique opportunity for students to learn from world-class musicians,” Katie White, FVCC Associate Director of Marketing, said. 

One of Mizutani’s goals is to help the college grow through more than just music. For instance, he’s collaborated with chef Howard Karp of the school’s culinary arts program to bring food and music to various events.  

“I want to do things for not just one department to grow, but that help the whole college grow,” Mizutani said. 

As for his own career, Mizutani has not joined any music groups locally, and has been performing mostly as a soloist. He was just part of a fundraiser show for the Easthaven Baptist debt-reduction campain, and will play a second concert on Aug. 14 for the same cause. He also works with the music ministry in his church, Blessed Pope John Paul II Catholic Church in Bigfork. He is slated to perform Sept. 28 for the Flathead Valley LIVE on Stage 2014-15 season.  

He has had plenty of experience playing with orchestra ensembles though, including the Hong Kong and New York philharmonics and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. He’s been a soloist for the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Korean Symphony Orchestra, the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, the Manhattan Symphony Orchestra, and many more.

“I’d been doing this for so long. It was time for a change,” Mizutani said of his decision not to join a local music organization.

His life as a musician began with piano lessons, but as both of his parents were pianists, he decided there would be less pressure if he took up the violin. After his parents divorced, his mother later married his first violin instructor, though, so his youthful plan backfired on him.

In 1986, when Mizutani was 13, his family immigrated to Hong Kong. Though the family had more freedom under the then British-held territory, they also faced real struggles to survive as there was no longer a communist government taking care of the basics.

“My mom almost ended up on the street because of financial needs,” he said.

Mizutani made his way in the world through music, though. The Hong Kong Philharmonic was looking for violinists, and though he was not yet 14, he sent in an audition and the group’s new director, a man from Tennessee, chose Mizutani to be part of the organization.

He later auditioned for and was accepted into the Juilliard School in New York City, where his first teacher was 91 years old.

“To teach a boy who doesn’t speak English, that is painful,” he said. 

He had a few more teachers on his way to earning his bachelor’s degree at Juilliard, and then he earned his master’s in music from the Manhattan School of Music. He went to Rutgers University in New Jersey to work toward his doctorate, but for logistical reasons, he wasn’t able to complete the recital component of the requirements, a situation he hopes to eventually remedy. 

During his years pursuing his musical education, he found a mentor in Glenn Dicterow, the concert master of the New York Philharmonic at the time. 

“He brought my interest back to music,” Mizutani said. “He showed me that being a musician is a true service.

“Until I was 34 years old, I had been taught that it’s about who you are on stage and showing off yourself. He taught me that it’s about bringing something to the people you are playing for.”

To improve his English-language skills, Mizutani took classes and also had a friend with whom he would have conversations of a spiritual nature. The friend was Catholic and at the time Mizutani was Buddhist. (Years later, Mizutani is an active Catholic and his friend is a Buddhist.)

“We kept trying to convert each other, which started improving my English,” he said. 

Mizutani decided to move to Canada in the late 1990s as it would take about a third of the time to become a Canadian citizen as to become a U.S. passport holder.

He stayed in Vancouver, B.C., for nearly a decade, focusing on performance and teaching. In the back of his mind, though, was  a vision from a photo calendar owned by the man who made his first high-quality violin. The image was of Glacier National Park, and he always had in mind the Glacier area as the ideal for his eventual home.

He took a Montana road trip at one point, and upon visiting cities such as Butte and Missoula, did not find the Montana he was searching for. But then a turn to Christianity brought him to the Flathead.

He said he had been learning Christmas music, and was in contact with a pastor from Alberta who was working in Evergreen. He was invited to come to the Flathead Valley and perform, and he said he knew right away that his visions of living near Glacier were not misguided. 

As a holder of five different passports (Chinese, Canadian, and three different types from Hong Kong), it was always a hassle for Mizutani cross the border from Canada into the U.S.. Yet he visited Northwest Montana when he could for the next five years, and finally decided to just make the move.

His employment has mostly been working as a consultant for his father’s piano factory in China, Parsons Music Corporation, one of the leading musical companies in China.