Dynell Weber

My specialty teaching on the violin has an emphasis on pain-free playing and a total body balance.

The first year that anyone is with me has the emphasis on "approaching violin and music through a relaxed body", not "how much music can I cram in". This system works on beginners as well as those who have played for years and realize they are in pain and want to find the tweaks to release the discomfort.

My journey that lead me to how I teach today:
I have played the violin since the age of 2, did my first performance at the age of 3 and went into the Seattle newspaper as "Seattle's Youngest Musician", and performed extensively internationally over a period of 25 years.

During my high school years I would come down to California from Washington State to study in an immersive style with claire Hodgkins', Jascha Heifetz teaching assistant. I was so immersed in violin that, in order to keep up with my own goals, I had the violin in my hands upwards of ten hours a day some times. In addition to studying with these 'heavy hitters', I would finish the summer traveling with an orchestra as their concert master and one of the soloists. My summers were a total immersion with my violin. During the year, I was performing upwards of four concerts per weekend while keeping up with studies.

For college, I got a full scholarship to study with Eudice Shapiro at USC for Music Performance.

By the time I finished, I was already working professionally: Los Angeles Opera Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Long Beach Symphony, Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, Pacific Symphony, studio work in film recording... to name a few.

By now, I had been teaching for 10 years and on stage for my entire life.

However, I had one issue that rose up. The typical violin aches and pains many get.

Violin is not an easy instrument to learn, and many teachers - all of my world class teachers included - never address body balance to help a student play with a body balance that enables relaxed states and pain free playing.

The fire in my back muscles and neck got bad enough I realized my days as a violinist were numbered if I didn't find a different approach to the violin. Not to mention, I always had migrains after playing the violin.

When the pain was bad enough (by now I was already playing professionally in the mentioned groups), I took time off to go to England (Oxford) to study Kato Havos and focused on how to approach my violin pain free. This would not be time spent learning music. This was time spent learning how to play the violin pain free.

I did not expect to change any of my students style of playing.

However, when what I learned headed me down the path of not just releasing my pain, but cutting my practicing hours in half and still getting the same amount done, I began incorporating a total body balance approach into my violin lessons with instant results for my students.

Today, my teaching is very specialized in body balance, body awareness and how it is the body is the foundation that creates the music.

The first year with any student has the emphasis on approaching the violin with the concept that:

1) The body is the foundation and where the "real violin" is.
2) Getting rid of any tension that is not necessary.
3) Correcting any muscle imbalances that are occurring which might cause pain later or impede the ease of how a person is playing something in the moment.
4) Structuring and customizing a students approach to the violin according to their individual body.

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2023: Jul.