JAN COLEMAN

STUDIO VIOLIN TEACHER

Jan Coleman, Chair of the String Department at the Academy of Music Northwest, specializes in teaching form, release of tension, body balance, movement and expression to students of all levels from all over Puget Sound. Ms. Coleman’s students have won first place in the Seattle Music Teachers Association Simon-Fiset String Competition, have won the Port Gardner Bay Chamber Orchestra Concerto Competition, and have been selected to perform in the Japan-Seattle Suzuki Institute Honors Recitals. Students who have begun their violin training with her have gone on to study at prestigious conservatories such as Juilliard, winning numerous competitions, including (as first violinist in string quartets) first prize in the 1998 Coleman National Chamber Music Competition in Los Angeles, second place in the 1998 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, and finalist in the 2003 Concert Artists Guild International Competition. As soloists, they have gone on to win many competitions, including the Seattle Young Artists Music Festival at age eleven, and have performed as soloists with numerous orchestras, including the Houston Symphony, the Bellevue Symphony, and Philharmonia Northwest.

Ms. Coleman’s extensive training in violin teaching has come from both Suzuki and traditional sources. She has studied violin pedagogy with nationally prominent Suzuki figures such as Michele George of the Cleveland Institute of Music, Edward Kreitman, William Starr, and John Kendall, and she incorporates traditional violin teaching techniques of the Galamian and Delay schools and Paul Rolland freedom of movement approaches. She is a Participant in the 2009 Starling-DeLay Symposium on Violin Studies at Juilliard.

Ms. Coleman studied violin performance with Kato Havas in London, and obtained her music degree at Wichita State University, majoring in violin under the tutelage of James Ceasar while performing as a violinist in the Wichita Symphony. Her violin teacher in high school was her late husband, Kent Coleman, with whom she collaborated in teaching for many years until his death in 2007. Ms. Coleman is a member of the Music Advisory Panel of the Seattle Young Artists Music Festival, and is on the Board of Directors of the Suzuki Education and Research Association. She was formerly Vice President of the Houston Music Teachers Association.