This is my new series “The Many Stories of Bill Fitzpatrick”. For years now I have been sharing stories from my journey as a violinist with my students and so with this project I’ve decided to share them with all of you. Each video is less than a minute long and they will be released one at a time, in no particular order, every Friday through next May 2022. I’m having fun with this project and am really hoping it will give another perspective on what it was like growing up as a black man playing the violin !
States of Playing is a series of four videos which explore graphs created by Prof Fitzpatrick during his lessons over the last few years. The graphs discussed are on Memory, Concentration, Problem Solving and Developing your Nervous System.
After the successful launch of his first book, In Search Of: A Guide to Violin Excellence which was downloaded over 700 times in over 80 countries, Prof Fitzpatrick decided to bring elements of the book to his world of videos and this is the result! These videos are between 2-4 minutes each and cover a range of topics from Concentration to Scales through Patterns.
This series of three videos is titled On Practicing. They are a very useful starting point for pedagogical discussions about how to practice and can offer possible avenues of exploration in ones personal study.
Violin Connections is a series of four pedagogical videos with embedded subtitles in three languages; English, French and Spanish. These videos are between 24-44 minutes long and explore shifting, bow strokes, scales and motor skill creation.
ViewPoint is a series of interviews on a few of the most remarkable pedagogues; Paul Kantor, Cornelia Heard, David Kim, Marcus Thompson, Mark Peskanov, Bruce Dukov and Richard Myron, teaching today.
These 84 videos found on VirtualSheetMusic are dedicated to understanding violin performance and pedagogy. Each video is between 6-12 minutes long and explores aspects of mechanics to pedagogical issues. Click below for playlists.
Click here for playlists:
LeftHand | Right Hand | Both Hands | Pedagogy
Bill has taught many of today’s leading violinists and chamber musicians. His students have been accepted to the Juilliard School, the Cleveland Institute of Music, the San Francisco Conservatory, the Blair School of Music, the Mannes New School For Music, the Paris Conservatory, the Aspen Music Festival, the Meadowmount School of Music, and the Perlman Camp. They have received post graduate degrees from schools such as the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, the Bienen School at Northwestern University, The Eastman School of Music, New England Conservatory, and The USC Thornton School of Music.
Formerly Founder and First Violinist of the New York String Quartet, Mr. Fitzpatrick’s musical experiences throughout Europe, Japan and the United States, have led him to positions such as Director of Chamber Music at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, France, Conductor of the Nashville Chamber and Symphony Orchestras to Founder and Conductor of “L’Ensemble des Deux Mondes” in Paris France and he has collaborated with orchestras such as “l’Orchestre Symphonique de France” and as soloist with The American Symphony Orchestra in New York. Bill has performed and recorded with artists such as Gaby Casadesus, Elliot Fisk, Claude Frank, Itzhak Perlman, Emmanuel Ax, Ron Leonard, Patrice Fontanarosa, Karl Leister and the renown French actor Richard Bohringer (in the stage production “Coetse”).
A graduate of the Juilliard School, Bill studied with Ms. Dorothy Delay and was an assistant to both Robert Mann and Claus Adam of the Juilliard String Quartet. Prior to his studies at the Juilliard School, he was a student of Stephen Clapp at the Blair School of Music in Nashville, Tennessee.
