Andrew
Andrew
Violin Teacher
Andrew has established himself as an extraordinary chamber musician, soloist, and teacher throughout America. As a former member of the critically acclaimed Fifth House Ensemble, he has performed at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre on their Composer Portrait series, on Rush Hour’s yearly summer music series, and participated in many master classes at institutions such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison and New Music on the Point. As a soloist, he specializes in performing great contemporary solo violin pieces. At Ravinia's Bennet Gordon Hall (summer of 2012) he performed David Rakowski’s, When the Bow Breaks, a sonata for solo violin, for which the composer praised ‘Now I like the whole piece, for the very first time!’ In November of 2011 he performed Kevin Puts’ epic solo piece, Arches on a Rush Hour Encore which was broadcast live on Chicago’s WFMT. Considered a champion of new music, Williams has commissioned a number of works for the violin. He has also given seminars on composing for the violin at Roosevelt University and the Fresh Inc. festival.
As a teacher, Williams has been on faculty at the Merit School of Music, teaching violin, viola, and served as string department chair. He was a co-founder of Merit’s Solo String Workshop, which hosted world class
artists such as Helen Callus and Rachel Barton Pine. Andrew also served as Professor of Violin Studies at Carthage College. His students have been accepted to violin performance programs at Northwestern University, University of Toronto, and Peabody. Chamber ensembles coached by Williams have been selected semi-finalists at the prestigious Fischoff Chamber Competition. Andrew is a member of the Suzuki Association of the Americas, receiving pedagogy training from Ed Kreitman and Michael McLean. Andrew
received his Bachelors in violin performance from the Cleveland Institute of Music and his Masters from Rice University. Former teachers include Ilya Kaler, Kathlene Winkler, David Cerone, and David Updegraff.