About Sarah Cole:

When I'm not teaching lessons, I'm probably snuggling my two Chihuahuas, Ira and Rico, hiking around WNY with my husband, Alec or watering my many houseplants :)

Hey there! My name is Sarah Cole

I'm originally from Nashville Tennessee and started playing violin when I was five years old. My family enrolled me in private lessons and I still remember having a vividly fun lesson learning Twinkle Twinkle and subsequently, violin became an integral part of my life!

I was homeschooled K-12th and playing violin was a large part of my community building and social network as a young person. I played in the Nashville Youth Orchestras for a decade and spent six summers at the orchestra / chamber music camp, Sewanee Summer Music Festival making lifelong friends and playing lots of music together.

While in my undergraduate program at Baldwin Wallace, I took a pedagogy class where I was paired up with a 4th grade student in the community to teach privately with my professor's guidance and that when I first experienced a significant spark of joy from private teaching. I continued teaching throughout my conservatory degrees, in music schools, in universities teaching undergraduate musicians, through El Sistema programs, traveling to students homes and even as a Kentucky public school orchestra substitute teacher!

I really found my niche teaching private lessons to young musicians aged K-12th grade. My mission in teaching is to instill the joy of music in every lesson, for every student, while holding all my students to the highest level they are capable of.

After I finished my last Master's degree (Violin Performance and Pedagogy) in 2018 and got married, I moved to Buffalo, NY in 2020 and started teaching out of my studio shortly after.

In September 2024, I decided to pour my energy and time into my Violin Studio and it's been my full time job ever since!

Being a full time studio owner allows me to spend my morning hours practicing violin, rehearsing chamber music with friends, time to carefully plan every lesson and group class while making myself very available to each and every student throughout the week!

Sarah Cole has three advanced degrees in violin;

Baldwin Wallace Conservatory (B.M)
- Violin Performance
University of Louisville (M.M)
- Violin Performance and String Pedagogy
Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Cardiff, Wales (M.A).
- Violin Performance with a Pedagogy emphasis

As a university student, Sarah Cole performed in public masterclasses for notable violinists such as:

Simon Fischer
Itzhak Rashkovsky
Daniel Phillips
Rachel Podger
Simon Rowland Jones

Sarah's primary violin professors were:

David Updegraff (Cleveland Institute of Music)

André Swanepoel (Irish Chamber Orchestra)

Patrick Raferty (University of Louisville)

Jullian Ross (Baldwin Wallace Conservatory)

Several semesters / years were spent studying violin with:

Rachel Podger, Annie Fullard, Hal Grossman

While in conservatory, Sarah was concertmaster (lead violinist) of the University of Louisville Symphony Orchestra and Sinfonietta, principal in the Royal Welsh String Soloists ensemble.

In recent years, Sarah participated in workshops and pedagogy training with Mimi Zweig and Elizabeth Faidley.

Sarah taught undergraduate violin lessons and coached chamber groups at the University of Louisville, as well as multiple workshops, string sectionals, quartet coaching in the Louisville Public School system.

Sarah held the Graduate Teaching Assistantship at the University of Louisville playing in the Graduate String Quartet during the M.M degree.

The second year of her masters degree, Sarah earned a second Teaching Assistantship in Early Music where she taught secondary viol da gamba lessons and coached viol consorts in Historical Performance in addition to her role as Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Graduate String Quartet. The UofL graduate quartet won first place in the 2018 Macauley Chamber Music Competition.

Sarah’s interest in early music was first sparked by performing in Baldwin Wallace University’s Bach Festival during her undergraduate career. During her graduate degree at Royal Welsh, she studied bass viol da gamba privately with Lucy Robinson and baroque violin from esteemed UK violinist Rachel Podger. Sarah continues playing baroque violin for fun today in a Buffalo Baroque ensemble and is often accompanied by her husband, Alec, a harpsichordist.