Bonnie Yeager, teaching artist, brings together a passion for teaching with her accomplishments as a performer to teach students across a broad range of ages and abilities. The primary goal of Yeager String Studio lessons and programs is to open the world of musical expression to students and build string-playing technique that allows that expression to grow. Through music experiences, students gain valuable skills that transfer to all areas of their life and careers, enhancing their creativity, opening new opportunities, and contributing to academic success.
Ms. Yeager has crafted a multi-faceted career as an orchestral musician, chamber musician, teaching artist and arts advocate. Driven by her deeply-held belief in the power of music and arts for everyone, she has balanced a performing career in the classical music world with a multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural approach to music and arts education.
A graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music (BM, MM Viola Performance), and the Interlochen Arts Academy, Ms. Yeager has won–through competitive audition–coveted orchestral positions with the Phoenix Symphony, Edmonton Symphony, South Dakota Symphony, Milwaukee Ballet Orchestra and Elgin Symphony. Other orchestral appearances include with the Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Philharmonic, Chicago Opera Theater, Milwaukee Symphony, Toledo Symphony, Madison Symphony and Chicago Sinfonietta.
An avid lover of chamber music, Ms. Yeager continues to perform regionally in recital and in chamber performances with a kaleidoscope of musical colleagues in a range of genres from classical to jazz to folk. She will very soon debut a new STEAM (STEM + Arts) chamber series for school performances and outreach events utilizing a range of musical genres to explore and enhance the core STEM concepts and curriculum.
Ms. Yeager is a passionate and devoted Teaching Artist, whose teaching encompasses both private and group upper strings instrumental instruction and broader community music-making. Trained as a Suzuki Method teacher, Ms. Yeager’s curriculum combines the Suzuki Method and a strong classical foundation with a creative and multi-genre approach. Committed to the outcomes of youth development through music participation, she has been an active teaching artist in community music programs the the El Sistema USA movement, bringing her creative strings curriculum to groups of children in transitional housing, domestic violence shelters, and under-resourced communities, as well as public school orchestra programs.
