Katja Yeager

Katja Yeager is an active orchestral player, chamber musician, studio musician, and dedicated teacher. She is a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Viola Performance as a student of Jeffrey Irvine and of Lynne Ramsey.

Katja’s orchestral experience as a leader and section player includes performances with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, Lexington Philharmonic, Verbier Festival Orchestra, New World Symphony, Ann Arbor Symphony, and Canton Symphony. She has performed under distinguished conductors such as Manfred Honeck, Valery Gergiev, Lahav Shani, Matthias Pintscher, Theodore Kuchar, and Fabio Luisi; and with internationally recognized soloists such as Kristof Barati, Joshua Bell, Renaud Capucon, Jinjoo Cho, Joelle Harvey, and Golda Schultz. In addition to her Proms debut at Royal Albert Hall in 2013 as a member of the inaugural National Youth Orchestra of the United States, Katja toured Southeast Asia with the Lincoln Center Stage Piano Quintet aboard the MS Westerdam in 2019. Previous years have seen Katja performing at private events, community concerts, and at summer music festivals including the Verbier Festival (CH), Castleman Quartet Program, Bowdoin International Music Festival, and Aspen Music Festival as a fellowship recipient.

Initially trained as a Suzuki Method violinist in the Northern Virginia area where she grew up, she credits the foundations of her musical appreciation and technique to her very first teachers, David Strom (Northern Virginia Suzuki Music School) and Tsuna Sakamoto (National Symphony Orchestra). Other influential teachers and mentors include Victoria Chiang, Caroline Coade, Daniel Foster, Dimitri Murrath, and George Taylor.

Katja currently lives in Nashville, Tennessee where she is a violin and viola Suzuki instructor at Belmont Academy, and Adjunct Professor of Violin & Viola at Tennessee State University for the 2023-2024 school year.

Katja also offers Practice Partner sessions. If you are interested in this service as a supplement to your or your child’s private lessons, please contact (preferably, have your private teacher contact) Katja for more information. For reference, you may contact David Strom via the Member Directory