Croton Violin Student Captures School's Attention

CROTON-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. – At the end of a performance by Pierre Van Cortlandt’s seventh- and eighth-grade strings ensembles, will be a piece not by a famous composer, but by eighth-grade student Jasper Rogal. The quiet and humble violin player has created a buzz through the middle school with his five part piece, “Presto, Moderato et Presto Assai.”

“The first time we played it I was tearing up, because I didn’t expect him to be that amazing,” said Olivia Vigletti sincerely.  The 14-year-old eighth-grade student expressed sentiments similar to those of her classmates.

 “I was in shock. There were no words for how beautiful that was,” Anna Burkholt, 13, said. Other students not involved in the music program have started calling Rogal “the violin kid,” after hearing about the composition and his playing.

“Really what happened was I was just playing around on my violin,” said Rogal. He said the “tune just came,” to him. The name of the piece roughly translates to “Fast, Moderately Fast and Really Fast,” in Italian music terms, he said. The music itself was neatly transcribed using the music software “Sibelius,” and looks no different than a professional piece of music supplied to the strings program.

Rogal’s part in the piece is a virtuosic solo with string plucking portions and phrases where two strings are played at the same time. All the while a string section of his fellow students backs him up in tension-filled and rhythmic harmony.

Some assume a “tiger mom” may be behind the 30 to 40 hours of practice Rogal puts in each week, he said, but that isn’t true. “My parents like that I do this, but they don’t push me to do what I do,” he said.

Sara O’Brien, strings teacher in the Croton-Harmon School District, has taught Rogal since he was in kindergarten. She said when he entered the program he was playing pieces she usually supplied to her fifth-grade students.  

O’Brien said she has been teaching in the district for almost 11 years, and students like Rogal are rare, and may come, “once in a lifetime, for me as an educator.”

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