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Date: 10/8/2021
SOUTH HADLEY – A long-time music lover is continuing to share his passion with Western Massachusetts.
Adam Sweet said his love of music was fostered from a young age with both of his parents as well as “all the other kids in my family” playing instruments from a young age. “My mother signed me up for Suzuki violin in 1966, it was a pilot program offered through the New England Conservatory of Music,” he said. “I started at 4, I started with about 50 other children my age, and just kept going. My mother and father were avid classical music buffs.”
From there, Sweet said his passion and career just continued. “I stuck with it all through high school. I played in all these various groups, the Greater Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra, I toured Europe in 1978 and lived in Germany for a while,” he said.
From there, he said he wanted a change. He said in 1979 he applied to two different music conservatories to further his musical talents, but was wait-listed to both. From there, he said he decided to go to Hampshire College in Amherst. “I wanted to get out of the house and get on with my life,” he said.
This, he said, was a turning point for him and one of the best decisions he made as Hampshire College was part of the Five College Consortium. “I took jazz at UMass [Amherst], music theory at Mount Holyoke [College] and classical violin performance at Smith [College]. I took a lot of great music coursework,” he said.
Sweet graduated in 1985 and, following his coursework, he said he found an interest in teaching. This, he said, was also ingrained in him from a young age. “My mom was a history teacher. She was always finding ways to get us to think about what it means to learn about something rather than just learning whatever the topic was,” he said. “It was natural for me to teach people how to do what I was doing. I thought it was so much fun, and wanted to share the wealth.”
He continued, “It all goes back to my parents, they were really passionate about education and learning beyond school, continuing education. All my students are adults, I feel like education shouldn’t stop because you’re out of school.”
Sweet recalled when he first began teaching shortly after graduating college. “I started teaching right away. In January of ’85 I got my first student, Johnny Riley. He used to be a DJ at The River before it was The River. He took mandolin lessons from me,” he said.
After years of teaching at his first job, he said a friend who worked as the treasurer of the Northampton Community Music Center encouraged him to apply for a teaching position at the center. “I signed up there and taught there from ’93 to 2007. It was a lot of fun, I liked teaching there,” he said. Sweet added that while there he conducted the “first mandolin orchestra in Western Massachusetts in the 21st century.”
It was in 2008, he said, that he moved to South Hadley and began teaching out of his home. Additionally, he said he started a 501C3 non-profit organization called the Mandolin New England. “We just go around. We have members from all over New England that play in the orchestra, we put on free concerts and master classes and stuff like that,” he said.
However, he said master classes and concerts were put on hold with the coronavirus pandemic. Sweet said while some things were put on hold, he never stopped teaching. He explained that he’d always had remote students, even prior to the invention of the Internet. “Even before that, even before the Internet I used to have remote students. They would sent me a letter saying they wanted to learn and I’d put a recording on a cassette tape and mail it back to them,” he said.
“One of my longest students is a woman, she started as a UMass student and then she was a big animal veterinarian and she got a job in North Carolina. She’s been taking fiddle lessons from me for 12 to 13 years.”
He said one aspect of his business that did suffer during COVID-19 was his ability to make income by playing for weddings. “Easily half of my income is playing for weddings. That disappeared completely,” he said. Following the increase in vaccinations, he said he’d played a significant number of weddings in recent months.
Sweet described himself as the “Western Massachusetts mandolin expert,” and said, “I’m the only one out here in Western Mass. that teaches mandolin. If you wanted to learn you’d have to go to Boston or Rhode Island.”
He said while he teaches most styles of music including celtic, jazz, bluegrass and Klezmer, his favorite genres to both play and teach include bluegrass and celtic. He explained Klezmer as the traditional music you’d hear if you were to go Jewish wedding, “Israeli or Jewish dance music.”
In addition to private lessons, Sweet said some of his favorite ways to share music while teaching are two groups. He said on Tuesdays he offers a Celtic music group. He said anyone who plays any instrument, except electric instruments, are welcome. It costs $10 to participate and it takes place at 7 p.m. He said, “We play traditional music for two or three hours. It’s more like a class than a jam session, I talk about the history.”
Sweet said he also hosts a classical mandolin ensemble that people can join in as well. That class takes place Mondays at 7 p.m. Sweet said, “We’re currently studying Mozart and Bach.”
Those interested in lessons or more information on classes are encouraged to visit his website at aso.contact. For more information about Mandolin New England people are encouraged to visit Mandolinnewengland.inc.