Violin
Violinist Tamara Tanner, praised for her beautiful sound and sensitive playing, is a graduate of Peabody Conservatory of Music with a Bachelor of Music in Violin Performance where she studied with Shirley Givens. She did work on her masters degree at BYU in violin performance and pedagogy before focusing on professional orchestra performance. She studied orchestral excerpts with Ralph Madsen and Wen Flatt, of the Utah Symphony, and David Taylor and Lei Hou of the Chicago Symphony. She has performed in many ensembles over the past three decades including symphony orchestras, chamber music ensembles, and recording studios.
As an active freelance violinist in the Utah and Chicago areas, she has performed with such notable orchestras as the Ballet West Orchestra, Utah Symphony, Sinfonia Salt Lake, Northwest Indiana Symphony, Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra, Elgin Symphony, Whiting Park Festival Orchestra, Paderewski Symphony Orchestra of Chicago, Music by the Lake Opera Orchestra, and the New Philharmonic Orchestra.
Tamara performed as a tenured member of the first violin section of the Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional de Chile, which is Chile’s full time national symphony, for three years, before returning to Utah to live closer to family. Previous to winning the orchestra job in Chile, she was a core member of Ballet West Orchestra’s first violin section. Currently she is a member of the Orchestra at Temple Square and performs with the Utah Metropolitan Ballet Orchestra and Salt Lake Choral Artists.
Tamara has always had a love of chamber music. She has performed as a chamber musician at the Chicago Cultural Center on the Classical Mondays series, at Sherwood Conservatory of Music on Sundays at Sherwood, at the Assembly Hall on the Temple Square Concert Series, and was first violinist of the Alba String Quartet in Chicago. While at Peabody, she studied chamber music with Earl Carlyss of the Juilliard Quartet. Coaching chamber music ensembles is one of her passions, and she enjoys teaching chamber music at Snow College.
Through her decades of experience as a performer and teacher, she has vast experience as a technician. She has developed a teaching style designed to help her students become their own best teachers. Tamara teaches her students how to produce a beautiful sound through understanding the principles of violin technique, how the instrument works, and how to use their bodies properly to obtain the best results without injury.
While residing in Chile, she became interested in the healing arts and has since obtained a massage therapy license. This training is an asset to her students who also benefit from her knowledge of anatomy and physiology. She has assisted many students, who have suffered from injuries or the physical strains of improper technique, to get out of pain and use their bodies in more productive, less painful ways which result in a more beautiful sound.
Tamara currently enjoys residing in Spring City where she maintains a private violin studio. She has been an adjunct professor at Snow College since 2015, teaching violin, viola, and chamber music. She has also held teaching positions at Sherwood Conservatory of Music, Suzuki Music School of Lincoln Park, McHenry County Music Center, and Wasatch Academy.
