Nora Friedman is the Suzuki Program Director at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music and the founder of the Bed Stuy Suzuki Violin Studio.
Nora Friedman attended Wesleyan University, where she received her B.A. in Latin American Studies, and holds a Masters in Performance from Montclair State University and Brooklyn College. She has studied with Perry Elliot, Masao Kawasaki and Weigang Li. She began studying the violin at age five at Central Park East School in East Harlem with Roberta Guaspari, renowned pedagogue and Artistic Director of Opus 118 Harlem School of Music. The movie, Music of the Heart, starring Meryl Streep, and the accompanying documentary Small Wonders, were made about Nora’s teacher, and you can see a teenaged Nora on the stage of Carnegie Hall near Itzhak Perlman at the end of Small Wonders if you squint.
In her 20+ years as a violin teacher, Nora has founded in-school violin programs in the South Bronx and Bed Stuy and has also sat on the violin faculties at the Thurnauer School of Music in Tenafly, the Elisabeth Morrow School in Englewood, the Preparatory Center for the Performing Arts at Brooklyn College, and Opus 118 Harlem School of Music.
Nora has completed Suzuki Violin Core Units 1-7 & 9-10 and many supplementary and enrichment courses, Suzuki Principles in Action, Practicum, including Supplemental Repertoire: Violin Books 6 – 8, Developing the Bow Arm from Pre-Twinkle through Book 10, Teaching with an Open Heart, Left Hand Pitfalls, and Establishing the Bow Arm. She has trained with Edward Kreitman, Edmund Sprunger, Allen Lieb, Tom Wermuth, Linda Fiore, Nancy Jackson, Catheryn Lee, Charles Krigbaum, Teri Einfeldt, Julie Lyons-Lieberman and Jennifer Johnson, to name a few.
Her passions include old-time fiddle, improvisation, and keeping the musician’s body and mind healthy. When Nora was a new teacher working in the South Bronx, she won a grant to travel around the U.S. and Canada learning about roots music. She went to West Virginia, California, and Saskatchewan. At BKCM, she has participated in anti-racism training and has been an integral member of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion project team, most recently working on creating a more equitable hiring process at BKCM.
When she is not working, you can find Nora singing with friends, biking around town, inventing games, composting, planning messy art projects, cultivating too many plants, rescuing strays, hiking, and cooking cauldrons of things in her tiny kitchen.