Violinist Scott St. John Joins Colburn School Faculty As Director Of Chamber Music

The Colburn School is pleased to announce that violinist Scott St. John will join the Colburn School faculty as Director of Chamber Music, beginning in fall 2018.

In this newly created position, St. John will lead the chamber music programs in the Colburn School's degree-granting Conservatory of Music and pre-college Music Academy, creating a sequential and collaborative pathway of training from the youngest students to most advanced ensembles.

Concurrently, the current co-Directors, Martin Beaver, Violin and Chamber Music Faculty, and Clive Greensmith, Cello and Chamber Music Faculty, will focus on individualized training for both violin and cello students. Greensmith will take over the cello faculty position previously held by Ron Leonard, who retired in fall 2017 after after an almost thirty-year tenure.

"It is truly a privilege to welcome Scott St. John to the Colburn School community," said Lee Cioppa, Dean, Conservatory of Music. "His remarkable talents as a performing artist in chamber music, orchestras and as a soloist, as well has his dedication to the art of chamber music and its unique and specific contribution to the education of young musicians, exemplifies the excellence and virtuosic teaching that is at the core of the Colburn School experience. Thanks to the outstanding work done by Martin Beaver and Clive Greensmith, the culture of chamber music continues to infuse life at Colburn. This newly created role will support a continuum of training under Scott's direction, from our youngest students in the Music Academy through most advanced Conservatory of Music students."

"I have enormous appreciation for the excitement and energy that the Colburn School brings to its programs," said St. John. "I look forward to working with the talented students and joining the dedicated faculty at Colburn, many of whom I have known and admired for decades."

The Colburn School is known as a top talent-producing school for today's most renowned chamber music ensembles, including the Grammy-nominated Calder Quartet, The Calidore String Quartet, winners of the 2018 Avery Fisher Career Grant, and Viano Quartet, who won third prize in the 2018 Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition and won bronze in the 2017 Osaka International Chamber Competition.

St. John was a member of the esteemed St. Lawrence String Quartet and faculty member at Stanford University for seven years, from 2006-2013. From 1999-2006, Scott was Associate Professor of Violin at University of Toronto, and founded the Felix Galimir Chamber Music Award for university students.

Currently Scott is Concertmaster of the ROCO Chamber Orchestra in Houston, Texas. He also coaches chamber music at Western University (Canada), and participates in the prestigious Marlboro Music Festival (Vermont).

A recent recording of Mozart's Symphonia Concertante with his sister Lara St. John won a Juno Award in the Best Recording: Solo with Orchestra category. Working with composers has been important throughout St. John's career; he has worked with John Adams, Charles Wuorinen and Osvaldo Golijov in the US, and composers in Canada, including Arsenio Giron, Gary Kulesha, and Elizabeth Raum.

St. John began his violin studies at age three with Richard Lawrence in London, Canada. He is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied violin with David Cerone, Arnold Steinhardt, and chamber music with Felix Galimir.

St. John supports several transportation advocacy groups, including Transport Action Canada and the Rail Passengers Association. He also supports HanVoice, a lobby organization for North Korean refugees in Canada.

About the Colburn School

The Colburn School comprises four academic units united by a single philosophy that all who desire to study music and dance should have access to top-level training. The degree-granting Conservatory of Music, the Community School of Performing Arts, the Music Academy for pre-college musicians, and the Trudl Zipper Dance Institute provide performing arts training to over 2,000 students from the Los Angeles area and around the world. The renowned teachers, performers, and scholars that make up Colburn's dedicated faculty serve as invaluable mentors to guide students' artistic development.

The Community School of Performing Arts acts as an entry point to performing-arts education, offering beginning to pre-collegiate training in music to students of all ages and skill levels. The Trudl Zipper Dance Institute includes dance instruction for young people and adults in ballet, tap, modern, and musical theater. Also, part of the Trudl Zipper Dance Institute is the pre-professional Dance Academy, which prepares a select class of young dancers for careers in ballet.

Young musicians from around the world study at the Music Academy, which prepares high-school aged students for further training at the world's top conservatories. Finally, the Conservatory of Music is one of the preeminent training grounds for classical musicians, with undergraduate and advanced degrees in music performance.

A robust community engagement program delivers performing arts education to low-income students in the surrounding areas. In addition, Colburn offers over $500,000 in scholarships to Community School students each year. Located in downtown Los Angeles, the Colburn School's campus boasts state-of-the-art performance and rehearsal spaces. Each season, the school presents over 300 concerts and performances, many of which are free and open to the public, at its downtown home and throughout Southern California

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