Historical tale of musical spoons

COSTA MESA — There was a time when John Zeretzke didn’t think he would get out of school, let alone be instructing a roomful of teachers. The classical violinist who has composed music for a number of ballet companies and film scores, struggled with math and reading early in life. As it turned out, though, Zeretzke wasn’t a slow child — he just needed the right jump start. When he began taking violin lessons, he found that inspiration.

“I went from one of the lowest-tested students at my school to one of the highest-tested,” Zeretzke told three dozen teachers and administrators Wednesday afternoon at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, which is hosting a weeklong workshop to help schools integrate arts into their curricula.

The center’s summer institute — run in partnership with UC Irvine Extension, the Orange County Department of Education and the California Arts Project — hopes ultimately to help struggling students out of their shells. Each day of the program, the participants listen to talks by arts professionals and engage in hands-on workshops.

Of the 37 teachers enrolled in the seminar, a dozen came from the Newport-Mesa Unified School District. The district, which featured arts education as one of the key goals for its 2004 strategic plan, is intent on encouraging more art projects this school year.

“What we’re about this week is coming together to hear about the California state standards and how they relate to this area, but it’s also about the aesthetic elements of the arts,” said Susan Astarita, the school district’s assistant superintendent of elementary education.

Earlier this week, Astarita and others attended workshops with mime Keith Berger and visual artists from the Orange County Museum of Art. On Wednesday, Zeretzke offered a bit of art and also a bit of history, showing instructors how to create musical spoons and relating the origins of the instrument.

The practice of playing spoons, Zeretzke said, evolved from playing bones; in American slave culture, percussionists would combine a pair of cow ribs and click them together against the hand and leg. Later, in more affluent settings, the bones morphed into silver spoons. In the workshop, Zeretzke had participants combine plastic spoons with tape and practice clicking out rhythms.

As far as Astarita was concerned, it was social science — and at $2.99 for a box of utensils, not too costly.