Dana M. Meyer

Dana Meyer,founder and Artistic Director of Music City Strings, is a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music and has been passionate about teaching for more than 40 years.  In her early years she developed and implemented the Boone County Schools Strings Program in West Virginia, was a faculty member of the Eastern Music Festival in Greensboro, North Carolina, instructor and chamber music coach at the New World School of the Arts (Miami), and became a performing faculty member of the Tucson Chamber Music in the Mountains in Tucson, Arizona.  While much of her early teaching career was focused on the high school and collegiate level, Mrs. Meyer performed extensively with chamber music groups and major orchestras in the United States.  She has performed with the Cleveland Orchestra, the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Denver Symphony, the Richmond Symphony, and with the major orchestras in Florida.  During her decade long tenure with the American Sinfonietta, she toured Europe annually and was part of the performing faculty at the Bellingham Music Festival in Bellingham, Washington.  While in Florida, Mrs. Meyer taught at the Dillard High School of Performing Arts and was instrumental in securing college scholarships for her students Kevin Sylvester and Wilner Baptiste, who have since formed the famed hip hop duo Black Violin.  In 1999, Mrs. Meyer discovered a passion for the teaching of young students and established her first private Suzuki studio in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  She immersed herself in the Suzuki pedagogy and became a protégé of Ronda Cole.  As her studio thrived she became President of the Suzuki Association of South Florida.  In 2005, Dana Meyer established a violin studio in Franklin, Tennessee. Her dream was to create a program that would provide children the means to become confident, sensitive and beautiful artists.  Music City Strings was the result of this dream.  An international-competition winning group, Music City Strings is one of the top youth string-performance ensembles in the country, has toured Europe, China, Canada and the US, and has attracted the attention of the music industry in Nashville.  The group has performed over 30 concerts with Grammy-Award winning artists Vince Gill, Amy Grant, and Michael W. Smith in such venues as the Ryman Auditorium, Schermerhorn Symphony Center, Bridgestone Arena, Music City Center and the Allen Arena at Lipscomb University.  Music City Strings was the headliner group for the Barrage Next Generation Tours in Wisconsin, Florida, and Arkansas, and has performed on the TOKENS Show at the Ryman, at the University of Louisville Suzuki String Institute, the Hope Foundation with Steven Curtis Chapman, DayStar Ministries, and Music City Roots. While Mrs. Meyer’s time is now mainly devoted to Music City Strings and her private students in Music City Strings Academy, other former faculty positions and posts include the Wintergreen Performance Academy, the Middle Tennessee State University Governor’s School of Music, the South Carolina Suzuki Institute at Furman University, The Fine Arts Student Academy in Nashville, and President of the Middle Tennessee Suzuki Association.  Mrs. Meyer is currently a faculty member with the Greater Washington DC Suzuki Institute, the Suzuki Institute at PhoenixPhest! in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the University of Louisville Suzuki String Institute and is the Auditions Coordinator for the Strings Division of NAMTA.  She was awarded Teacher of the Year by the Nashville Area Music Teachers Association in 2016.