​The Chapel Hill Cooperative Suzuki Project has served thousands of Suzuki students in and around the Triangle since the idea was formed more than 40 years ago. The vision and effort of leading teachers Mary Ellen Bierck, Nancy Brooks, and Mary Frances
Boyce developed the annual fall workshop into the success it is today. Over the years, the Chapel Hill Cooperative Suzuki Project has sought to further the educational methods of Shinichi Suzuki’s Talent Education method through renowned guest clinicians. 

Since its founding, students from many studios have attended the workshop!
Dr. Suzuki’s legacy thrives in the music of the thousands of children served.

Dr. Timothy (Terry) Durbin​

Dr. Cortney Combs Baker

Jessica Landes

Tarish Pipkins

We are excited to welcome back Dr.Terry Durbin to the Chapel Hill Durham Suzuki Workshop. What a privilege it has been to have Dr. Durbin as our guest clinician for 26 years! Dr. Durbin holds a DMA in orchestral conducting from Claremont Graduate University in Los Angeles, California, a Masters in violin performance from the University of Illinois, an undergraduate degree in violin performance from the University of Alabama, and is currently the director of the Suzuki String Program at the University of Louisville. He is a registered teacher trainer with the Suzuki Association of the Americas. Dr. Durbin has taught at over 800 workshops and institutes across the country and the world!

Cortney Combs Baker is a native of Athens, Georgia.  She began her violin studies at the age of three at the University of Georgia Pre-College Suzuki program.   Her degrees include a Bachelor of Music Education from Furman University, and a Masters of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts in Violin Performance from the University of Texas at Austin. 
Dr. Baker has performed with the Austin Symphony Orchestra, the Brevard Music Center Orchestra, The Corpus Christi Symphony, the Abilene Philharmonic and the Victoria Symphony, where she served as principal second violin.  Currently she performs with the NC Opera Orchestra and the Pro Cantores Orchestra at Duke University.
From 1995-2002, she was Assistant Director of the University of Texas String Project, a teacher training program in Austin, Texas.  From 2002-2007, Dr. Baker was Co-Director of the Sunshine Suzuki Strings in Davie, Florida where she taught violin and viola.  She has taught Suzuki violin for over twenty years and has completed training in books 1-7 as well as Music Mind Games Level 1.  Her present studio, Pineland Suzuki Strings, is located in Cary, North Carolina. 

Jessica Landes holds a Master of Music Degree in Violin Performance from East Carolina University and a B.S. in Music Education from Goshen College, Indiana.  As an active performer and collaborator with the band Stray Local she performs regularly on stages in the coastal Carolina region, opening for bands such as the Infamous Stringdusters and Jordan Tice.  In June 2017 Stray Local was the only band chosen from the United States to participate in the Festival International de Musique Universitaire in Belfort, France.  A seasoned Suzuki student herself, Jessica studied Suzuki piano for 13 years and Suzuki violin for 11 years and completed her most recent Suzuki trainings with teacher trainers Martha Shackford, Linda Fiore and Joanne Bath.  Having spent 10 years of her career in Pennsylvania, from 2010 to 2012 she created and directed the Rhythm & Bloom music program at the Braddock Carnegie Library in Braddock, PA.  Jessica takes a special interest in composition for young people, music programs in libraries, parent support for weathering the ups and downs of music lessons, and fiddling.  On a daily basis she enjoys bouncing creative thoughts around the Suzuki triangle that she and her studio families create as part of her home studio, Landes String Studio.  Jessica lives in Wilmington, NC, with her husband David and daughter Harmony.

Tarish Pipkins a.k.a. Jeghetto, was born in a small steel mill town called Clairton, PA located south of Pittsburgh, PA. He is a self taught artist and has been creating art from a very young age. As a teenager, he moved to the East Side of Pittsburgh and graduated from Taylor Allderdice High School. In the late 90’s Tarish joined the BridgeSpotters Collective and became known for his Live paintings and Poetry. He was also a Barber for over 20 years. He moved to North Carolina in 2005 where he launched his career in Puppetry. There, he fine tuned his skills by doing street performances with his puppets. In 2008 he started working with Paperhand Puppet Intervention. He has built puppets and performed in several Paperhand productions. Most recently, Jeghetto had the pleasure to work with national recording artist, Missy Elliott on her music video, WTF ( Where They From) controlling the Pharell puppet and doing some puppet building. He also worked on the Amazon Echo commercial featuring Missy Elliott and Alec Baldwin as puppets. Tarish is a former teacher at Just Right Academy, a private alternative school for children with special needs. Tarish is married and a proud father of five children. Jeghetto’s passion is promoting Oneness through the magic of Puppetry.

Jennifer Curtis

The New York Times described violinist Jennifer Curtis’s second solo concert in Carnegie Hall as “one of the gutsiest and most individual recital programs.” She was celebrated as “an artist of keen intelligence and taste, well worth watching out for.”
Curtis navigates with personality and truth in every piece she performs. Jennifer is a member of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) and founder of the group Tres Americas Ensemble. She has appeared as a soloist with the Simon Bolivar Orchestra in Venezuela and the Knights Chamber Orchestra; performed in Romania in honor of George Enescu; given world premieres at the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York; collaborated with composer John Adams at the Library of Congress; and appeared at El Festival de las Artes Esénias in Peru and festivals worldwide.
An educator with a focus on music as humanitarian aid, Jennifer has also collaborated with musical shaman of the Andes, improvised for live radio from the interior of the Amazon jungle, and taught and collaborated with Kurdish refugees in Turkey.
Jennifer joins the Haw River Ballroom’s Culture Mill in Saxapahaw, North Carolina as artist in residence this spring, and will teach a course on the art of interpretation at Duke University next year. She plays on a 1777 Vincenzo Panormo.

Emily Russ
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Emily Russ, praised for her sensitivity and responsiveness, is an active collaborative pianist in the Triangle and Triad regions of North Carolina. She performs regularly with music students at both UNC Chapel Hill and UNC Greensboro. In 2016, Emily was one of the collaborative pianists at the Richard Luby International Violin Symposium at UNC and collaborated at the Composers of Color Collective Conference at NCCU. Recent professional performances include a recital with cellist Samuel Magill at Carol Woods Retirement Community in Chapel Hill, NC and a chamber Young Artists Concert at The Cedars of Chapel Hill. As a collaborator, Emily has performed for a number of masterclass clinicians including Gil Shaham, Mimi Stillman, Kevork Mardirossian, Laurie Smukler, Aaron Berofsky, Kevin Lawrence, Fabian Lopez, and Nicholas DiEugenio. 
 
Emily has accompanied summer program Greensboro Light Opera and Song, as well as UNCG’s Touring Opera in the fall and Opera at the Carolina in the spring. A former Suzuki violin student, she also enjoys playing for local Suzuki group classes and recitals. Emily holds a Bachelor of Music degree in Piano Performance from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2013) and a Master of Music Degree in Piano Performance from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (2015).

Katie Brennan

Katie began studying ballet at age 8 and now enjoys helping children learn how to explore movement and embodied expression. She has sought to connect body and mind through earning her Master of Social Work from Baylor University and more recently, becoming a Registered Dance Movement Therapist. Katie has taught dance to students from age 3 to 60 in Kansas City and spent a season teaching creative movement and modern to elementary students in rural Costa Rica. Professionally, Katie has performed in the Kansas City area with 940 Dance Company, City in Motion, and Gurukul Indian Dance Company. She spent a season as an associate artist with Core Project Chicago before moving to NYC where she performed with Kinesis Project Dance Theater and led dance movement therapy groups with children in a Harlem family shelter and a youth drop-in center. Katie currently lives in Miami where she maintains a private mental health practice, performs with Momentum Dance Company and National Water Dance Project, and teaches ballet to preschoolers. She is excited to return to Carrboro where she facilitated dance workshops in conjunction with the Grow-A-Fiddler Suzuki studio and Hello Piano! Studio in 2011.

Rebekah Carlson

Rebekah Carlson is a Suzuki violin and viola teacher and freelance violinist. She plays with several professional music ensembles, including the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra, the North Carolina Opera, the Carolina Ballet, the Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle, the Durham Choral Society, and the NC Master Chorale. Rebekah is also an active chamber music performer, presenting concerts at Duke University in their faculty series, as well as several area venues. Rebekah holds a degree in violin performance from Wheaton College (IL) and is a passionate music educator with extensive training in Suzuki pedagogy and advanced violin pedagogy. Rebekah is certified through the SAA through Volume 4, has participated in the Starling-DeLay Symposium on Violin Studies at the Juilliard School, and has also completed training in Music Together.®  She has taught at the NC Suzuki State-wide Play-in and is a frequent clinician at several regional workshops. Rebekah is the founder and director of the Chapel Hill String Ensemble, which has performed both regionally and internationally, with recent tours to Austria, Germany, and Italy. Her students have held leadership positions in their school orchestras, the Mallarmé Youth Chamber Orchestra, and the Greensboro Symphony Youth Orchestra, and have also been accepted to the North Carolina School of the Arts . Rebekah is proud to have students majoring in several different disciplines in prestigious colleges and universities across the U.S., with almost all of her graduates involved in music at the college level, whether they’re majoring in music performance, public health, history or applied math! Rebekah currently lives in Greensboro, NC, with her husband and two small children. When she's not teaching, she enjoys reading, cooking, and spending time outdoors with her family. 

Erika Atchley

Erika Atchley, MM The Manhattan School of Music, BM The North Carolina School of the Arts. Ms. Atchley began studying music at the age of five with her mother, Wilinda Atchley. Her major teachers include Elaine Lee Richey, Mitchell Stern and Burton Kaplan. Erika was one of the first generations of Suzuki violin students in the United States and remembers fondly her experience with Dr. Suzuki at the Stevens Point Institute in Wisconsin.
Ms. Atchley began teaching with her mother at age 15. She has taught violin at the Lucy Moses School of Music of the Elaine Kaufman Cultural Center in New York City, the Queensborough Community College Suzuki Program in New York City, and the Huntington Suzuki Program in Long Island NY. Currently Ms. Atchley teaches in the Triangle Area Suzuki Talent Education (TASTE) Program. Erika believes strongly in growth mindset and strives to create life long learners in her studio.
Prior to moving to North Carolina, Ms. Atchley was an active soloist, chamber musician, and freelancer in New York City. She held a position in the first violin section of the Harrisburg Symphony for seven seasons and toured the United States and Europe as a chamber musician. As a freelancer, Erika performed many different kinds of music including playing electric violin with several rock bands, including Modern English. Erika now enjoys playing Principle Second Violin in the Bar Harbor Chamber Orchestra, performing regularly in the North Carolina Symphony, playing recitals, teaching her violin students, and raising her son. Erika, her mother and her son make a three generation Suzuki family. 

Scott Walker

​Scott and his fiddle tune books have inspired an uncountable number of students all over the country. Originally a cellist, Scott began studying Irish fiddle in the 90’s, eventually teaching both Irish music and cello at Suzuki Institutes across the country.  Since 2000, he, along with his brother Landon, and his daughter Jennie, perform as the Walker Family Band. In 2006 this core group began offering the very popular Walker Family Band Camp, held in the mountains of NC, at the Blowing Rock Conference Center. 

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