Mrs. Esther Fellows

Esther Fellows is a registered Violin Teacher Trainer by the Suzuki Association of the Americas (SSA), as well as a Registered Trainer for Every Child Can. Living in Mounds, Oklahoma, where she maintains a Suzuki home studio in violin/viola/piano, Esther is the Suzuki Violin Teacher/Teacher Trainer at the Community Music School at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater.

An active professional performer as well, Fellows is a 1st violinist with the Signature Symphony (Tulsa OK), Assistant Concertmaster with the Bartlesville Symphony (Bartlesville OK), violist with the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra (Tulsa OK), and was previously Principal Viola with the Arkansas Philharmonic (Bentonville AR).

Fellows serves as secretary on the Board of Directors for the SAA. With memberships in SAA and MTNA, Fellows is the only SAA Registered Teacher Trainer in Oklahoma and also holds the distinction of being a Nationally Certified Teacher of Music, through the exam and recital process, on three instruments—violin, viola, and piano. In addition to the SAA and MTNA, other memberships include the American String Teachers Association (ASTA), the American Viola Society, the Oklahoma Music Teachers Association, and the Tulsa Area Music Teachers Association, where she has served as President, as well as other elected leadership positions. Fellows has been published in the American Music Teacher, and by ASTA.

Starting as the Suzuki/Orchestra Director at Fort Lauderdale Christian in the mid ‘70’s, Fellows’ Suzuki training has been under outstanding teacher trainers that included Margery Aber, Pat D’Ercole, Mark Bjork, James Mauer, Craig Timmerman, Alice Joy Lewis, Carol Tarr, Nancy Lokken, Joanne Melvin, Lorraine Fink, Joe Kaminsky, Carol Dallinger, Christy Felsing, Tom Wermuth, and Lorraine Landefeld. Additional advanced teacher trainings have been through The Juilliard School’s Starling-Delay Symposium. Undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder were under Oswald Lehnert (violin), Abraham Chavez (violin), Ruth Morrow (viola), and Guy Duckworth and Storm Bull (piano).

Having former students performing professionally in Europe and the United States, Fellows is especially proud of her four children who all play professionally—Joy Fellows, violist with San Francisco Opera and San Francisco Ballet; Rachel Schnackel, substitute violinist with Memphis Symphony, Nashville Symphony, and Concertmaster with the Jackson Symphony (MS); Dan Fellows, violist with the New World Symphony (Miami Beach); and Jessica Fellows, substitute violinist with the New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, and St. Louis Symphony.

Esther speaks some Spanish.