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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If you don't get answers here, the biggest competitions in the area would publish lists of the winners in each age group and the teachers, wouldn't they? I'd look to see if any of the teachers names show up more than once and then Google them. That would be for intermediate and advanced anyway.

Beginners are a little trickier. If it were me, I would attend some of the conservatory recitals, like Levine's, and pay attention to the youngest kids' technique. If the students of a particular teacher stand out, I'd start there.

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The problem with this strategy is that you are looking for a teacher who grooms their student for a competition, and thus with a certain goal/result in mind coming out of that competition.  There is so much to learning the violin than just one competition after another.  There are so many high quality teachers in this area who don't teach with the main goal being a competition, whose teachers don't select pieces for their students to learn just for the goal of which pieces would show best in a competition vs. which piece is best for the student in terms of their stage in current development.  If a certain teacher's name consistently comes up in the competition results page, that would raise a red flag for me.  My eldest daughter studied with a top rate teacher in the area several years ago; the teacher was Juilliard educated and a very fine violinist.  But the teacher did not push the kids to competitions and yet, she had a top rate studio.  The teacher's name never comes up in these competition lists but does that mean that she is an inferior teacher to those who push the competitions and whose names are always posted on these lists?  A teacher who is devoted to their student, teaches a balanced nutrition of scales, etudes, technique, pieces, but somehow is able to do so with dedication to the student with incremental and steady development over the years, this is what a healthy teacher does.  All the competition teachers out there, while they may be very good, are sometimes in it for the notoriety that a certain result brings back to themselves and their studios.  I would also check the turnover rate in certain studios.  Sometimes these competition teachers experience fatigue and burnout in their studios. If you are a dedicated teacher, the students don't hop over to another studio.  Some studios have a revolving door, check out the ones where the only way to get in is through the few openings when a senior in high school graduates.  But the best way to know how a teacher teaches and a studio is run, is really to have conversations with families who are currently or formerly a part of that studio.  Lastly, I would add that if you ask a lot of these competition students about their repertoire, many focus on a very few pieces, like 2-3 main pieces over the course of the year and they consistently compete with these same 2-3 pieces in all of the competitions for that year.  There is not a whole lot of time to expand their repertoire because another competition is always just around the corner.  The non-competition studios have the time to explore many more pieces in a year because they aren't met with competition deadlines.  So these are two very different approaches to developing repertoire on the violin over the years.[/quote]

Completely and totally agree with you but the problem is finding that excellent teacher whose students don’t participate in competitions, which are among the few performances that are open to the public. Other than word of mouth, which is what OP is looking for here with minimal results, and going through the published lists as someone posted above, how do you find this person?[/quote]

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