Masterclass: Laurie Smukler, Violin

Laurie Smukler Biography

Laurie Smukler began her studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Her first public performance with a major symphony orchestra was as a violin soloist with the Cleveland Orchestra at 14. She earned her BM from The Juilliard School, where she studied with Ivan Galamian. Other teachers who have had a powerful influence on Ms. Smukler's development are Donald Weilerstein, Robert Mann, Rudolf Serkin, and Menahem Pressler.

She is a professor at The Juilliard School. She has been on the faculties of Purchase College Conservatory of Music, Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival and School, the Manhattan School of Music, Mannes College, and the Bard College Conservatory. She offers master classes throughout the United States. In addition to regularly performing the classics, Ms. Smukler has played premiere performances of works by Shulamit Ran, Ned Rorem, Tobias Picker, Bruce Adolphe, John Harbison, and others. She has recorded for Music Masters.

Ms. Smukler is a founding member of the Mendelssohn String Quartet and has been co-director of the Collection in Concert series at the Pierpont Morgan Library. She has performed and toured with the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society and Music From Marlboro along with other celebrated groups. She and her husband, violist Ira Weller, have directed and performed in the respected series “The Collection in Concert,” at the Pierpont Morgan Library on Madison avenue in New York for over a decade. She plays regularly at the chamber series, Da Camera of Houston and Capitol Concerts in Vermont. Recent concerts include a tour of China, as well as concerts and master classes in University of Illinois, University of Wisconsin, The Juilliard School, University of Iowa, and Bucknell University, and the University of Texas (Austin)

Laurie Smukler plays a Petrus Guarnerius violin made in Venice in 1738.

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