Strings

Strings students in all degree programs receive:

  • weekly one-hour private lessons
  • weekly memory class
  • weekly piano ensemble and/or chamber music
  • accompanying experience

Highlights

  • Ensemble options, both large and small, at Nazareth
  • Teaching opportunities in Rochester-area schools and Nazareth's Community Music Program
  • Numerous performance opportunities on and off campus
  • Gain leadership experience in various coaching, conducting, and performance roles
Performance Opportunities
Teaching Opportunities
  • String primaries majoring in Music Education assist in teaching as a freshman and/or sophomore at Trinity Montessori School, Young Women’s College Preparatory Charter School, and the Churchville-Chili School District.
  • In the sophomore or junior year, Nazareth string students move from assisting in group string instruction to becoming the primary teacher at these institutions.
  • String students are eligible to teach through the Nazareth College Community Music Program upon completion of ‘String Pedagogy I’.
  • All of these experiences take place in advance of student teaching allowing our students to mature as teachers with a strong base of teaching experiences to compliment their student teaching experience, as well as working closely with the string faculty in these settings.
Leadership Roles
  • Nazareth College Student Chapter of the American String Teachers Association (ASTA): Run solely by student members and overseen by New York ASTA President, Nancy Strelau. The chapter organizes three benefit and outreach experiences each year and attends regional and national conferences.
  • Nazareth College Chamber Orchestra: All string music education students make their conducting debut here during their junior year while completing a class in Orchestral Conducting.
  • Opus 2 Concertwerke Chamber Orchestra: String students are invited to conduct and/or perform.
  • Hochstein Youth Symphony Orchestra: Strings students are invited to coach string sectionals throughout the year.

Strings faculty »

Ergonomics

    Ergonomics: As the skeletons "hold" a violin, bass, cello, and viola, string pedagogy class students see how bones, muscles, and tendons align. This fun and injury-preventing lesson in music-playing ergonomics was by Music Prof. Nancy Strelau and Brianne Oricchio — who is both the Nazareth Symphony Orchestra concertmaster and a fifth-year Nazareth physical therapy doctoral student — in Nazareth's physical therapy lab.

    String Students Travel

    String students will be traveling to Nassau, Bahamas in Oct. 2018 to accompany the National Youth Choir of the Bahamas, performing the Cantata I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes by Aldophus Hailstork, and a couple of pieces by my late colleague and former student, Cleophas Adderley.

    Tyler Nadrich, violin (soph) MED
    Alicja Cygan, violin (soph) OT
    Heather Gilleran, viola (soph) MED
    Sara Truncali, violin (soph) MTR
    Jessica Geisler, violin (frosh) MED
    Jessica Kromer, viola (junior) MED
    Mackenzie Dupra, cello (frosh) MED
    Jacob Bloom, cello (frosh) MUSBUS