Sarah Murray Espinoza

Sarah Murray Espinoza earned a Bachelor’s degreesumma cum laudein Violin Performance from Valparaiso University and a Master’s degree in Violin Performance from the College of Music at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her major teachers were Andrew Smith, Gregory Maytan, and Oswald Lehnert. Other influential teachers were Clara Takarabe and Margaret Gutierrez. She was a winner of the Valparaiso University concerto competition in 2006, and performed Beethoven’s Romance in F as soloist with the Valparaiso University Symphony Orchestra.

Sarah Espinoza was Principal Second Violin of the Boulder Symphony Orchestra from 2013-2017. Other orchestral experience has been with the Paradise Symphony, Boulder Opera Company, Fort Collins Symphony, North Carolina Symphony, and Northwest Indiana Symphony Orchestra. She has attended the National Music Festival, the Masterworks Festival, the Stamford International Music Festival, and was a member of the Blue Lake International Youth Orchestra. Her youth and university orchestra experiences brought her opportunities to tour and perform in Europe and China.​

Sarah is a registered Suzuki Violin Teacher, training with Edward Kreitman and William Starr, and is Suzuki certified through Book Eight. She taught Suzuki violin at the Center for Musical Arts in Lafayette, Colorado from 2010-17. She was a Suzuki violin teacher at Strings in Schools in Paradise and Oroville, CA from 2017-2018. Her teaching experience includes coaching at the Butte MTAC Youth Orchestra, the Chico Summer Music Academy, the Longmont Youth Symphony, the High Plains Youth Symphony, and the Chamber Intensive Camp at Valparaiso University.

With fifteen years’ teaching experience, her encouraging and thoughtful teaching style inspires students to find a love for music. Passionate about the power of music to change the world, her goal in teaching is, in the words of Dr. Suzuki, to guide students to develop “sensitivity, discipline, and endurance, and to grow a beautiful heart.” She has a private violin studio in the Sacramento area and plays in the North State Symphony in Chico and Redding, CA.