West Virginia University violin professor Mikylah Myers McTeer has only been a faculty member in the School of Music for a few years, but in that short time she has taken the violin studio at the Creative Arts Center to a new level of excellence.

In honor of her extraordinary work with students, McTeer was recently presented with the Outstanding Teaching Award in the College of Creative Arts for 2014.

According to WVU School of Music Director Keith Jackson, McTeer is the epitome of the modern-day applied music teacher.

“Her ability as a pedagogue has led to an increase in both the quality and the number of students coming to WVU to study violin,” he said. “This increase has been clear in the traditional areas of student growth at the undergraduate and graduate levels and in the development of a nationally and internationally diverse violin studio of exceptional quality.

“This quality is most evident in performances by the WVU Symphony Orchestra and the Graduate String Quartet, both of which have been recognized in national competitions in the last two years.”

McTeer came to WVU in 2007. She subsequently received the WVU School of Music’s Outstanding Teaching Award in 2008 and was named West Virginia’s Outstanding Studio Teacher of the Year by the West Virginia chapter of the American String Teachers Association in both 2009 and 2010.

Currently the only violin professor at WVU, she teaches 23 students in her studio at the Creative Arts Center and also performs internationally as a soloist, chamber musician and orchestral player.

She received her bachelor of music degree from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where she studied violin with Roland and Almita Vamos.

She then earned her master’s degree and a doctorate in violin performance from the University of Houston’s Moores School of Music, studying with Fredell Lack. During her time in Houston, she regularly performed with the Houston Symphony and the Houston Grand Opera. She was also a violinist with the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, Florida.

“I have had the opportunity to study with some of the world’s greatest violin teachers,” she said. “In violin pedagogy, we speak of ‘violin lineage.’ You can trace some of today’s best teachers back to the famous composers. I was very lucky at Oberlin, and at Houston, to study with teachers who came from this lineage, and I am lucky to be able to pass this on to my students as well.

“Every student is different and it is fun to find out what technique works best for each one. You have the same goal of getting them to play at the highest level, but some you have to push in one way and others you have to encourage in a different way.”

During the summers, McTeer’s students travel the world, and so does she, performing at music festivals throughout the United States and Europe, many of which are very competitive on the national and international level.

This past summer, several of her students received very prestigious scholarships to study at major music festivals: Taylor Giorgio, a native of Charleston, West Virginia, went to the Bowdoin International Summer Music Festival in Maine to study with Janet Sung; Joey Rabchuk of Macomb, Illinois, went to the Chautauqua Summer Music Festival in New York to study with Jaques Israelievitch; Kori Hill, a native of Oxford, Ohio, went to the Wintergreen Summer Music Academy in Virginia; and Kristi Holstein, a native of Charleston, West Virginia, went to the Eastern Music Festival in North Carolina.

It was recently announced that two outstanding violinists from McTeer’s studio—Taylor Giorgio and Pittsburgh native Judith Meyers—have been selected to perform for Rachel Barton Pine, one of the great international violin superstars, during a master class with the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra on Sept. 20 in Charleston, West Virginia.

Rachel Barton Pine’s principal teachers were Roland and Almita Vamos, with whom McTeer studied at Oberlin, and who are part of the “violin lineage.”

McTeer continues to pass along this lineage as she teaches a one-hour lesson each week with each of her students. They include undergraduates, graduate students and students with a minor in violin.

Many of them are studying for a doctorate, since the WVU School of Music is the only school in the region that offers a Doctor of Musical Arts in Violin Performance.

Only her best students are selected to perform with the WVU Symphony Orchestra, in a competitive audition process that she compares to selecting players for the football team.

“We can only have a certain number and they must be the very best,” she said.

Last year, her students helped the WVU Symphony Orchestra become recognized as one of the most outstanding university orchestras in the country.

Follow McTeer and her studio on Twitter: @WVUviolin.

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cl/09/12/14

CONTACT: Charlene Lattea, College of Creative Arts
304-293-4359, Charlene.Lattea@mail.wvu.edu