Joseph Kaminsky

Joseph Kaminsky

We are pleased to share that longtime Suzuki Violin teacher and SAA violin teacher trainer Joseph Kaminsky has been selected as the Missouri ASTA Artist Teacher of the Year, which is awarded to “a performing musician who has taught in addition to their career as a performer and has made a significant contribution to the education of string students in the State of Missouri.”

Bravo, Joe! You are an invaluable member of the Suzuki community. Read more about Mr. Kaminsky:

Joseph Kaminsky has taught violin for forty years. His teachers have been Almita Vamos, Roland Vamos, Shinichi Suzuki, John Kendall, Fryderyk Sadowski, and his first teacher Donna Wiehe. Hehas been aregistered SAA teacher-trainer since 1985. Since 2000, Mr. Kaminsky has authored more than thirty pedagogical articles appearing in the American Suzuki Journal, developedthe "Vibrato From the Ground Up” DVD for teaching vibrato, and has authored a set of violin technique bookscalled “Technique Mastery for Violin” as an adjunct touse with the Suzuki volumes. Mr. Kaminsky has taught more than 350 workshops/institutes in thirty-three states, Canada, Puerto Rico, at the 2006 International String Conference in Singapore, and at the 1999 World Suzuki Conference in Matsumoto Japan.He has taught on the violin faculties of both University of Missouri-St. Louis and Webster University, and has joyfully taught for eighteen years as beginning strings instructor with the Kirkwood School District.

Joseph Kaminsky feels strongly that excellence begins from the moment the student’s first lesson begins. Every note played has to be a precursor to playing the Tchaikovsky concerto, and thus a child’s first teacher is their most important one. With that in mind he starts out new three-year-olds every year, continually trying to find new better ways to reach children and prevent any common problems he sees with his advanced students from occurring down the line with his newest beginners. Evidence that excellence with one teacher can occur all the way up can be seen in the St. Louis student orchestra hierarchy. His students were either concertmaster or assistant concertmaster in four of the six training orchestras in 2013: 2013 assistant concertmaster of the Missouri All-State High School Orchestra; 2013-14 assistant concertmaster of the St. Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra; 2013-14 concertmaster of the St. Louis All-Suburban Middle School 7th/8th orchestra; 2013-14 concertmaster of the Webster CMS Concert Orchestra; and 2013-14 concertmaster of the Webster CMS String orchestra. Additionally his students have won the St. Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra Concerto Competition in 2004 and 2012, and have been violin winners in the Belleville Philharmonic’s “Stars of Tomorrow” Competition fifteen times in the last sixteen years.

His former students have played or currently are playingprofessionally in the Arkansas Symphony, Ann Arbor Symphony, Copenhagen Philharmonic, Indianapolis Symphony, Kansas City Philharmonic, Milwaukee Symphony, New World, New York Philharmonic (as a long-term sub) and Syracuse Symphonies. Other students have gone on to become professional music teachers themselves. But the vast majority of his students have just gone on to their chosen fields,enhanced bythe discipline, cognitive skills,and love of music that a Suzuki education can bring.