Violin with Yasmin D.

I spend my days working in the music industry for companies such as the GRAMMY Awards and Carnegie Hall and play professionally at night. I teach all experience levels from beginner to intermediate and advanced at my private music studio in Mamaroneck, NY. I attended Hunter College - CUNY where I earned my BA and MA degrees in Music Education. I pursued post-graduate work as a DeHann Fellowship recipient at Indiana University - Jacobs School of Music where I studied with Henryk Kowalski, Mimi Zweig and Federico Agostini, and focused specifically on String Pedagogy and Violin Performance. I have continued to pursue the study of violin performance, most recently in the Irish fiddling tradition and am a founding player of Mary O's Irish Music Session in New York City and co-founder of The Hutton Sunday Sessions. I can also be seen performing and creating music at many notable East and West Coast venues and alongside artists on national television such as The Tonight Show and Good Morning America. I have shared the stage with artists such as Pink, AJR, Flogging Molly, The Young Dubliners, The Pogues, Dermot Mulroney, Chip Robinson (The Backsliders), Tim Robbins, Volumen Cero and The Dan Band. My role as a teacher is to provide support, encouragement, and awareness in each students musicality and creativity. Through my teaching, I want to lead each student to be the best they can be as a musician. Through classical training, I provide students with a solid technical foundation with intonation, sight-reading, and musical phrasing to create a canvas for them to explore music in different ways – improvisation, musical genres, different styles of playing, etc. From a violin technique standpoint, I observe each student’s temperament, quality of tone, bow arm, left hand technique, and general playing style, and find what can be improved upon. At the end of the day, I want each one of my student’s to have developed a healthy sense of musical self-esteem, and ignite their passionate interest in creating music.