GUEST ARTIST FACULTY
 

Violin Joanne Bath Gabe Bolkosky Celina Boldrey Casado Michele Higa George Carrie Reuning-Hummel Ed Kreitman Kimberly Meier-Sims William Starr

Viola Joanna Binford Betsy Stuen-Walker Cello Amy Barston Rick mooney Fiddle Jenny Burton Theory Gloria Jacobson

Joanne Bath

Recognized as a Suzuki pioneer in the state of Georgia, Lois Akins has been teaching violin and organizing workshops for nearly 30 years. Mrs. Akins grew up in Lexington, Kentucky, and later graduated from Georgia College with a Bachelor of Music Education. Lexington, Kentucky. Afterwards, she taught choral music in the school system for six years. Ms. Akins eventually became involved with Suzuki after taking a teacher training course with Yuko Honda in Louisville, Kentucky. She then continued her training with Bill Starr, Linda Fiore, John Kendall, Alice Joy Lewis, and Doris Preucil. Since that time, Ms. Akins has attended and taught at institutes around the country.

As founder and director of the Suzuki Strings of Augusta, Ms. Akins is a highly committed and energetic teacher. There are 165 students in the Suzuki Strings of Augusta Program, and they are very active in the Augusta community. Mrs. Akins teaches 40 students weekly in that program. Several of her former students have pursued musical careers and are active Suzuki violin teachers in the southeast.

Mrs. Akins is married with three children and five grandchildren. Two of her children are also Suzuki teachers and teach with Lois at the Suzuki Strings of Augusta. Outside of teaching and coaching her students, she enjoys playing in a string quartet that meets every Thursday morning.

Amy Sue Barston

Praised as “passionate and elegant” by The New York Times, cellist Amy Sue Barston has performed as a soloist and chamber musician on stages all over the world, including Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, the Ravinia Festival, the Caramoor International Music Festival, Barge Music, Haan Hall (Jerusalem), the Power House (Australia), the International Musicians Seminar (Cornwall, England), Symphony Center (Chicago), and the Banff Centre for the Performing Arts (Canada).

At age seventeen Miss Barston appeared as soloist with the Chicago Symphony on live television. The same year, she won Grand Prize in the Society of American Musicians’ Competition, and First Place and the Audience Prize in the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition.

Miss Barston began her studies at age three with Nell Novak at The Music Institute of Chicago. She continued with Eleonore Schoenfeld at the University of Southern California and with Joel Krosnick at The Juilliard School, where she earned her Masters degree and was Class Assistant to Mr. Krosnick.

In addition to performing standard cello repertoire, Miss Barston has premiered a variety a works written for her by living composers across the United States. In 2000 she performed as soloist with the Prometheus Chamber Orchestra in the world premiere of a cello concerto written for her by Juilliard professor Kendall Briggs. In 2001-2002, she toured the US and Australia, performing new and traditional music from North, South and Central America. She performed Osvaldo Golijov’s Omaramor for solo cello in twenty cities, receiving twenty consecutive standing ovations. In 2002 Miss Barston performed the world premiere of Ned Rorem's Aftermath at the Ravinia Festival. The Chicago Sun-Times wrote of the premiere: "the deep, rich tones of Barston's cello haunted the vocal line like a sorrowing vision."

Miss Barston has performed as soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Chamber Orchestra, the Prometheus Chamber Orchestra, and the Rockford Symphony, among many others. She made her first solo appearance with orchestra in Guelph, Canada when she was twelve.

Miss Barston is also the cellist of two critically acclaimed chamber ensembles, The Corigliano Quartet and Divahn. The Corigliano Quartet has been hailed by The New York Times as having "an excellent, smooth sense of ensemble, but with each part vigorously alive," and by Strad Magazine as having "abundant commitment and mastery." Divahn is a unique all-female quartet that specializes in Middle Eastern, North African music and improvisation, infusing traditional songs with sophisticated harmonies and arrangements using vocals, tabla, cello, rabel, doumbek, violin and other acoustic instruments. She is also co-artistic director and founder of the Canandaigua Lake Chamber Music Festival in New York.

Miss Barston is, above all, a devoted teacher: in her home, at the New York School for Strings, as an assistant teacher at The Juilliard School, and at numerous summer music festivals, including the National Cello Institute, the American Suzuki Institute, Sound Encounters, and the Japan-Seattle Institute. Several of her students commute for lessons from hundreds of miles away, some from as far away as Alaska and Japan.

Each year, Miss Barston gives recitals, master classes, chamber music performances, and solo performances with orchestra throughout the US and abroad. Her upcoming schedule includes solo performances in Seattle, New York, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Kansas, Wisconsin, Chicago, and Germany; chamber music performances in England, Germany, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Houston, Nebraska, and Florida; and giving master classes for young cellists in eleven cities in North America and Germany.

Gabriel Bolkosky

Gabriel Bolkosky has practiced the violin for approximately 18,923 hours (as of today). Several thousand of those hours were spent with his parents telling him to watch his bow. He has taken about 1,600 hours of private lessons from the likes of Donald Weilerstein, Paul Kantor, Michael Avsharian, and many other teachers. He has now given about 8,500 hours of private lessons.

Celina Boldrey Casado

Celina Boldrey Casado received her Bachelor of Music in violin performance from Oberlin Conservatory and her Master Music degree in violin performance and Suzuki Pedagogy from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville where she studied with John Kendall. She performs throughout the St. Louis area, playing both modern and baroque violins in chamber concerts and recitals. Her early music work includes regular appearances with Early Music St. Louis as well as concerts with the Kingsbury Ensemble, Collegium Vocale, and Musicke’s Cordes. While the recent arrival of Emma Casado has complicated her schedule, Celina continues to co-direct the Greater St. Louis Suzuki Association and remains in demand as an instructor and clinician at Suzuki workshops and institutes across the country.

Michele Higa George – Violin

Michele Higa George received early training in violin and piano from Juanita Cummins in Southern California. In 1977, she received a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Southern California (USC) where she was a student of Alice Shoenfeld. Michele received Suzuki pedagogy instruction from Dr. Phyllis Glass at USC and taught the Suzuki method in the USC preparatory division and at the University of California at Northridge.

After leaving California, she established a Suzuki string program in the Baltimore City Public Schools. In 1980, Mrs. George moved to Matsumoto, Japan to study at the Talent Education Institute with Dr. Shinichi Suzuki. She graduated from the teacher-training program there in 1982, and returned to the U.S. to teach at both the Preucil School of Music in Iowa City, and Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa.

In 1986, Michele George was appointed to the faculty of The Cleveland Institute of Music as Director of Suzuki Studies where she designed and implemented a Master of Music degree program in violin performance and Suzuki pedagogy. She served in that position from 1986 to 2003. Michele is a registered teacher trainer for the Suzuki Association of the Americas, and as served as a member of that association's executive board. She is also executive producer of the film, Nurtured By Love-- the life and work of Shinichi Suzuki. Ms. George is a frequent guest clinician at workshops for teachers and children throughout the world, and has taught in Africa, Taiwan, Costa Rica, Japan, Australia, and most states and provinces in the U.S. and Canada. She was the keynote speaker at the Suzuki Association of the Americas Leadership Retreat in 2003, and conference in 2004.

Recently, Michele George has devoted her energies to developing Suzuki string programs at both Chambers Elementary School in the inner city of East Cleveland and in Arusha, Tanzania near the great Serengeti National Park. She spent a month in Zimbabwe 2004 beginning a Suzuki program in Harare. Her most recent pursuit is teaching pre-school at Laurel School in Shaker Heights, Ohio, where daughter, Emiko, is a third-grader.

Kimberly Meier-Sims

Director of Sato Center for Suzuki Studies, Kimberly Meier-Sims received a Bachelor of Music degree in education and violin performance from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville and a Master of Arts degree in violin performance from Western Illinois University. Her teachers have included John Kendall, Allen Ohmes, and Almita Vamos. She has taken long term Suzuki training with John Kendall, Almita Vamos, and Doris Preucil. The summer of 1986 she studied violin and pedagogy with Dr. Shinichi Suzuki. Ms. Meier-Sims was a full time violin instructor at the Preucil School of Music (1984-1996). At The University of Memphis Scheidt School of Music (1996-2004) she was a member of the music faculty conducting the graduate Suzuki pedagogy program, coordinating the Suzuki String Prep Program, and directing the Suzuki String Summer Institute. She held positions in the Cedar Rapids Symphony (1984-1996) and was a frequent sub in the Memphis Symphony. She has published articles in the American Suzuki Journal and the Tennessee Musician. In 2001 she won Tennessee's ''Outstanding Teacher Award'' and the ''Tennessee Governor's School Award.'' She has taught at Suzuki institutes and workshops throughout the U.S. and Ireland. In 2002 she was the violin coordinator for the American Suzuki Conference in Minneapolis. She was appointed to the Cleveland Institute of Music faculty in 2004.

Elizabeth Stuen-Walker

As an innovative teacher, performer, and composer, Elizabeth (Betsy) Stuen Walker has made her mark as a Suzuki viola and violin clinician worldwide. After receiving an undergraduate degree in viola performance from the Eastman School of Music followed by her Master of Music degree in viola performance from Yale, Betsy moved to Bellingham, Washington and established a viola/violin studio. That studio has grown and flourished for over 20 years.

Betsy became increasingly involved in the Suzuki movement as a teacher trainer and board member of both the Suzuki Association of the Americas (SAA) and the Suzuki Association of Washington State. She has published several volumes of viola ensembles including the viola accompaniments for the Suzuki volumes as well as Violas in Concert and Treble Clef for Violists.

Betsy is also very active in her community as a church choir director, string teacher at a Waldorf School, and a string quartet and symphony member. Wherever she goes, Betsy leaves the mark of the purple viola power.