Betsy Kobayashi, Violin

Betsy Kobayashi B.A. University of New Hampshire, 1976; studied with Shinichi Suzuki for 2 years and graduated from the Talent Education Institute in Matsumoto, Japan, in 1988. She is the director of Pineland Suzuki School in the Augusta area, where she has taught for over 20 years. The school has grown from about 20 students, co-founded by Betsy and Ellen Gawler, who were doing group classes and concerts together in their living rooms, to about 100 violin, viola, and cello students studying chamber music, string orchestra, and fiddle, as well as Suzuki repertoire classes. As the past president of the Maine Suzuki Association, she organized workshops and tours. She founded the Sonata Festival for advanced students. Her students have been selected for the All-State Orchestra and the Suzuki Association of the Americas Honors Orchestras. She has taken two groups of students to Japan: in 2013 to attend the International Suzuki Conference and in 2018 to participate in the Suzuki Summer School in Matsumoto, the birthplace of the Suzuki Method!!! She is involved in starting a new youth orchestra in the Augusta area, which meets for rehearsals at the University of Maine at Augusta.