Famed Violinist Kelly Hall-Tompkins to give Master Class at Hoff-Barthelson

 Series featuring world-class musicians and educators commences March 9, 2023
The 2023 Hoff-Barthelson Music School Master Class Series commences with famed violinist Kelly Hall-Tompkins on Thursday, March 9, 2023, from 7:00 – 9:00 pm. The class will be held at the School, located at 25 School Lane, Scarsdale and is open to the public to observe free of charge. Reservations are required and can be made by visiting www.hbms.org, e-mailing hb@hbms.org or by calling 914-723-1169.

About the Hoff-Barthelson Music School Master Class Series
Master class coaching by guest artists has been part of Hoff-Barthelson’s curriculum since the School’s founding in 1944. This distinguished tradition continues this season with a roster of world-class musicians and educators including Kelly Hall-Tomkins, violin; Jerry Grossman, cello; Ruth Slenczynska, piano; and Jennifer Grim, flute.

Master classes are an enlightening experience for students and audiences alike. After months of careful preparation, students perform for, and then receive feedback and guidance from a master teacher who challenges the student to think in new and critical ways about the piece they have prepared. The results are inspiring and enlightening and serve as a catalyst for students to reach new heights in their own musical explorations. Yet, the learning is not limited just to the students who perform. Any student—regardless of their level of development, or whether or not they even play the same instrument—can learn a great deal.

About Kelly Hall-Tompkins
Winner of a Naumburg International Violin Competition Honorarium Prize, Concert Artists Guild Career Grant, Sphinx Medal of Excellence and featured in the Smithsonian Museum for African-American History, Ms. Hall-Tompkins is a trailblazing and innovative violin soloist entrepreneur who has been acclaimed by the The New York Times as “the versatile violinist who makes the music come alive,” for her “tonal mastery” (BBC Music Magazine) and as The New York Times “New Yorker of the Year.” She has appeared as co-soloist in Carnegie Hall with Glenn Dicterow and conductor Leonard Slatkin, in London at Queen Elizabeth Hall with conductor Michael Morgan, recitalist at Lincoln Center, soloist as the Inaugural Artist in Residence with the Cincinnati Symphony, and with the Symphonies of Baltimore, Dallas, Jacksonville, Oakland, Greensboro, recitals in Paris, New York, Toronto, Washington, Chicago, and festivals of Tanglewood, Ravinia, Santa Fe, Gateways, and in France, Germany and Italy.

At home with genres beyond classical music, Ms. Hall-Tompkins is the first soloist to perform the Wynton Marsalis Violin Concerto after the original dedicatée and toured for 5 years with Mark O’Connor. She was “Fiddler”/Violin Soloist of the Grammy/Tony-nominated Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof. Inspired by her experience, she commissioned and developed the first ever Fiddler solo disc of all new arrangements, The Fiddler Expanding Tradition, which is featured alongside her recital in Kiev, Ukraine in the new documentary “Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles” on the 55-year history of the musical. Ms. Hall-Tompkins’ Imagination Project was called groundbreaking” by STRINGS Magazine and has received over 1 million views on YouTube.

As founder of Music Kitchen-Food for the Soul, Kelly Hall-Tompkins is a pioneer of social justice in classical music, bringing top artists in over 100 concerts in homeless shelters coast to coast from New York to Los Angeles, and in internationally in Paris, France. Ms. Hall-Tompkins is on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music and also a published author contributor to Music and Human Rights on Routledge Press.

Photo by Chris Lee