Ms. Elise Winters

Beginning violin at the age of four, Elise Winters studied with internationally renowned Suzuki teacher Ronda Cole and with Elisabeth Adkins, associate concertmaster of the National Symphony Orchestra. She is a graduate summa cum laude of Rice University in English and Music. She has played with the Austin Symphony Orchestra for 18 years, performs regularly with the Grammy award-winning Conspirare Choir, and is highly sought as a chamber musician and soloist in the Austin area.

Elise has been on faculty at the Austin Chamber Music Center for 14 years, and has twice co-coordinated their summer chamber music workshop. Her violin & viola students have won top honors in Austin region orchestra competitions, and gone on to music schools including Texas State University, Boston Conservatory, and New England Conservatory.

A University of Texas Presidential Scholar, where she received her Master of Social Work in 1999, Elise’s interests outside of music have extended to developmental psychology, linguistics, cognition, communication, and biomechanics. She received her Kodály training at the University of Indiana under Brent Gault and Georgia Newlin. She is a co-author of Buzz to Brilliance: A Beginning and Intermediate Guide to Trumpet Playing (Oxford University Press, 2012), and is the author of Kaleidoscopes for Violin, a method book series which synthesizes the best elements of Suzuki, Kodály, and European traditions.