All our faculty have come to this approach as a result of their own search for concrete answers and solutions, whether to nagging frustrations with playing, years of struggling with a severe injury, or pedagogical curiosity. Each of them brings a unique perspective to this work.
Want to schedule a lesson with one of our faculty? Contact them directly or ask us for a recommendation.
Sophie Till
Violinist Sophie Till’s teaching has become internationally known for solving playing-related injuries and for her work teaching professional orchestral players. Since 2013, she has given numerous workshops and lecture series and has organized symposiums for professional orchestral players, teachers and students in the U.S, U.K, Singapore and Australia, where she was also featured as a keynote speaker for the Australian String Teachers Conference. Since 2015 she has made annual visits to the U.K., teaching and running workshops for members of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and BBC Orchestras. In 2016, she made her first visit to teach members of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and is now the orchestra’s first string specialist. Sophie regularly teaches professional players, teachers and students from all over the world via Skype, and many come in person to undertake intensive periods of lessons. She is Associate Professor of Violin at Marywood University Pennsylvania and Director of the Marywood String Project for children ages 4-18. The combination of Sophie’s work in String Project and with professional players has resulted in a new children’s pedagogy now being used in schools and string programs internationally.
Sophie is active as a performer, in particular with duo partner Ron Stabinsky, with whom she has played for over twenty years. They have given recital series in the U.S and U.K, have been featured in live television performances and radio broadcasts, and have recorded together.
Sophie studied with Dona Lee Croft at the Royal College of Music Junior Department in London from the age of 9. She completed her undergraduate studies with Zakhar Bron at the Royal Academy of Music, London and in Lübeck, Germany and her graduate work with Charles Treger at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her studies took a different turn when in 2007, Sophie started studying with pianist Edna Golandsky, the foremost proponent of the Taubman Approach and Director of the Golandsky Institute. Sophie immediately recognized the extraordinary nature of the information and under Ms. Golandsky’s guidance, they started to develop the approach for violin. In addition to weekly lessons, Sophie undertook the Institute’s Teacher Training program, eventually joining the faculty. It has been Sophie’s work with Edna and her time at the Institute that has inspired the creation of the Till Project, providing other string players access to this unique knowledge and approach.
Rachel Smith
Australian violinist Rachel Smith has a varied career as performer, teacher and festival director. She is a member of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and lives in Edinburgh, where she is on the teaching faculty at St. Mary’s Music School.
Rachel completed her undergraduate degree at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music with Michele Walsh, then began her professional musical life as a member of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra in 1997. During her 13 years there she took study leave periods in Chicago (Northwestern University) and Berlin. A very active chamber musician, she is a former member of the Iven Street Trio and the founding director of the Stradbroke Chamber Music Festival, which has been held yearly on the beautiful subtropical Minjerribah (Stradbroke Island) since its inception in 2007.
In 2009, while struggling with a playing-related injury, Rachel was introduced to Sophie Till by her pianist friend Therese Milanovic, a proponent of the Taubman Approach. The Skype sessions with Sophie began—and haven’t stopped! Her curiosity was piqued, and she found that the layers of understanding needed to play the violin in a healthy way are by no means magical or accidental.
Rachel loves to craft and make, and to understand structure, the fabric of things and their underlying nature. Recently she made the revelatory connection that playing the violin is just the same—we need to understand the fabric of the sound and how to produce it in a precise physical way so that we can communicate exactly what we want to an audience.
Sally Anne Anderson
Sally Anne is a violinist with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra as well as a lead musician for the Liverpool Philharmonic’s El Sistema-inspired project, In Harmony Liverpool.
It was always clear to Sally Anne that performing and teaching were equally important to her, so on being accepted into the RLPO she negotiated a job-share position that enables her to explore music education alongside performing in the orchestra. Sally Anne taught for the Royal Academy of Music’s ‘First String Experience’ as well as being involved in a variety of the Liverpool Philharmonic’s learning and participation projects until the orchestra launched In Harmony Liverpool, an intensive music education program using orchestral music-making to improve the health, education and aspirations of children and young people. Sally Anne was seconded from the orchestra to be the founding Artistic Director for this program, which now engages over 1500 children.
Specialising in group string teaching, Sally Anne currently teaches over 350 children each week! She is enthusiastic about developing ways for teaching a healthy technique to big groups of string players. Sally Anne has created many resources to support her style of teaching, including two series of books, ‘Tune Up!’ and ‘Sticks & Blobs’. ‘Tune Up!’ is a thorough, incremental approach using folk tunes to develop essential string playing knowledge. Based on the Kodaly method, ‘Sticks & Blobs’ equips students with the ability to sight-sing.
Residential courses were a key part of Sally Anne’s musical upbringing, so she is delighted to run Priory Farm Music Camps with musical friends from her youth. As the conductor of the camp orchestra, Sally Anne gets exciting results from teaching orchestral repertoire from the inside out using the fundamentals of music, song and movement. She is also looking forward to coaching for the National Children’s Orchestra of Great Britain, having been a member as a child.
Sally Anne studied Violin at the Royal Academy Music in London with Diana Cummings, in Berlin with Ilan Gronich and after a hiatus from lessons has resumed studying with Sophie Till.
Nora Krohn
New York City-based violist Nora Krohn's career as a performer, educator, and writer explores the confluence of artistic expression, self-reflection, and health. Her orchestral work has taken her to four continents and venues such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kimmel Center, and the Teatro Colón. Former Principal of the Bridgeport Symphony, former Assistant Principal of the Ridgefield Symphony, and former section violist in the Greenwich Symphony, Nora is a frequent guest of other orchestras throughout the Northeast US. She toured Japan twice as Principal of the Balkan Chamber Orchestra, appearing live in concert and on national radio and television to champion the possibility of peace and reconciliation through music. An emerging recitalist, her commitment to thoughtful and diverse programming has charmed audiences at numerous recital series throughout the US and Canada, most recently the Oasis Musicale series at Christ Church Cathedral in downtown Montreal.
Following her recovery from focal dystonia under the guidance of the Till Approach, Nora has become an ardent advocate of healthy musicianship, and enjoys spreading knowledge about injury prevention and healing far and wide. This focus on physical health as well as mindfulness also forms the backbone of her pedagogy, no matter the students' age or level. She has taught at Sunnyside String School, Turtle Bay Music School, the Art of Practicing Institute, and the Youth Orchestra of St. Luke's, and currently maintains a private studio in New York City and online.
A deeply reflective writer in both English and Spanish, Nora delves into the intersection of performance, self-development, and spirituality on her blog, Living in the Middle Voice, which has readership in over 70 countries worldwide.
Nora graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Brown University, where she earned a BA in Music and Spanish Literature and was the recipient of the Buxtehude and Muriel Hassenfeld Mann Premiums in Music. She received her MM in Viola Performance from SUNY Purchase College, where she studied with Ira Weller.