Musical gift living legacy

Akron Beacon Journal - August 25th, 2005

by Elaine Gureglan

One came of age in the Roaring Twenties and adventurously traveled abroad to study the violin before becoming a wife, mother, Akron Symphony member and music teacher in Akron.

The other is of the iPod generation, a young violinist just on the cusp of deciding what she wants from a life in music.

Their lives intersected because Elsa Sabol's son Kenneth wanted to keep his late mother's legacy of music alive by passing on her collection of music to someone young and vibrant.

Someone like the young woman Elsa had been in 1922, when the Worchester, Mass., native set sail, by herself, for Paris.

Someone like Allison Lint.

The 17-year old violinist lives in Cuyahoga Falls, as does Ken Sabol, but the two were strangers until the Tuesday Musical organization brought them together.

They gathered for lunch recently, along with Allison's mother, Kimberly Lint, as well as Barbara Feld and Pete Birgeles, the general manager and development director of Tuesday Musical, to get better acquainted.

Elsa Nordsrom grew up as one of four musical daughters in a prosperous family in Worcheser, Mass. At the age of 18, she traveled alone to Paris to study with a student of the renowed French violinist Eugene Ysaye. The regimen was intense, according to the newspaper clipping Ken Sabol had brought along: Four hours of individual daily violin practice. Three private violin lessons a week. Two French lessons a week. Apparently the training was good background for her acceptance into the top-ranked Juilliard School when the young violinist returned to the States a year later.

Later, when married life brought her to Akron, Elsa Sabol was deeply involved with Tuesday Musical. So when Ken Sabol was puzzling over what to do with his mother's music, he went to the organization for advise. Barbara Feld thought of Margaret Baxtresser, the Akron pianist, who had bequeathed her music collection to a music conservatory. Baxtresser (who has since died), Feld and Birgeles suggested that Sabol consider turning his mother's music over to a gifted young violinist they knew-Allison Lint. He liked the idea. Of all the musical items he inherited, he said, "I really would like to have (them) go to people who could use it, just like Allison."

Over lunch at LeFever's restaurant in Cuyahoga Falls, Ken Sabol spoke admiringly of his mother. Strong-willed, creative, an early feminist and a disciplinarian ("I had to mind my P's and Q's," joked her son), she ended up in Akron when her husband took a job there. Sabol painted a picture of a devoted public school music teacher.'The young fella in the back of the class, who would rather play baseball-like me-she would get him to participate," he said proudly.

At 17, Allison is a year younger than Elsa was when she set out for Paris. Already, she has moved quickly through the many opportunities open to a young musician in Northeast Ohio. She joined the Akron Youth Philharmonic at age 8, (her legs dangled from the chair when she played, her mother remembered) and moved on to the Akron Youth Symphony, then the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra. Home-schooled by her mother, she is in her second year in the competitive Young Artist program at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she studies with David Russell and takes the same classes as conservatory students. This summer, she has participated for the third year in the Encore School for Strings, a selective summer program in Hudson affiliated with Cleveland Institute of Music.

Her mother remembers a little girl who was drawn to music, eagerly going to the piano to imitate the melodies she heard in the music her parents were playing. Whether it was Glenn Miller, Def Leppord or classical music on WKSU, Allison was drawn to it, Kimberly Lint said.

What does Allison remember from her first years of violin studies, which she began at 7?

"Actually, the very first thing I remember is not wanting to practice. I remember mom and dad were always very insistent that I practice even when I didn't want to," said Allison, who has a definitive way of speaking, like her mom.

But at 12 or 13, something clicked.

"Before, it had just been something, I did. It wasn't very personal. At this point, I started to really understand the music and understand why its so important and how it can touch people," Allison said. "It became an expression."

Her musical progress has been rapid, but not everything has fallen easily into place for this intelligent and promising young woman. Last December, Allison, who had always been healthy, started coughing up blood. Her condition was difficult to diagnose until she had been back and forth repeatedly. It turned out that she had an autoimmune disorder that causes the body to attack is own organs.

She persevered. Now, she remembers key events of winter and spring 2005 as they relate to her hospital visits.

When she went into the hospital in January, she got out just in time to play the audition or a Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra concerto competition.

In April,she had to return to the hospital the day after she played a Tuesday Musical event at Summer on Ridgewood and was introduced by Margaret Baxtresser to Ken Sabol for the first time.

The medicines Allison has been taking seem to be working, and her chances for staying in remission are good, said Kimberly Lint. "It's nothing I can't handle," said Allison. She is thinking over her options for further training after she finishes high school, definitely for a career in music. And in her spare time, Allison sometimes joins her dad, Scott, an amateur rock guitarist; her 15-year old sister, Corie, a cellist and pianist; who plays bass and drums, in a family jam session at Rico Latter, a coffe bar in Stow. (The family's next appearance is at 8 p.m. Saturday at Rico Latte, 4161 Steels Pointe Road in Stow. The lineup just depends on who wants to play on a given night.)

On the day of the luncheon, the biggest item of business was exchanging the music. After lunch, Allison and Sabol headed out to the parking lot, where in the heat of noontime sun, Sabol opened his trunk to reveal boxes of scores. The prettiest were the French editions, yellow but with the floridly decorated covers still intact.

Part of the fun, Allison said. would be going through the music to see what markings Elsa had made. From looking at bowings and expression marks Elsa had written in, Allison would get a good idea of how that strong willed young woman had played the music, some woman had played the music, some three-quarters of a century gone by.