Laurel Thomsen - Monterey, CA

Personal statement

Laurel Thomsen has always had an ear for song. After an early childhood of singing circles, piano lessons, and recorder classes at school, Laurel began playing the violin at the age of nine and immediately took flight. Laurel sees her instrument as an extension of her body and voice, a means to convey a full range of feeling and emotion, both the obvious and the subtle. She hears music as a story and when she plays, her experience moves her beyond the auditory into a holistic experience of all the senses. To Laurel, music is a form of dynamic communication with herself and with others and she enjoys stretching the boundaries of her musical voice.

Lesson information

The attitude and enthusiasm Laurel Thomsen has brought to private studio teaching and string coaching for youth orchestras since 1996 is strongly rooted in her own daily discoveries as a musician. Her teaching is influenced by a variety of pedagogues, including the Galamian, Sassmannhaus, and Suzuki Methods, and the work of Kato Havas. Laurel has developed innovative instruction methods that focus on developing her students' listening abilities while working with the biomechanics of the body. Her goal is to produce playing that is natural and free of tension, both mentally and physically.


Lessons emphasize all aspects of right and left hand technique, posture, music reading as well as the ability to learn melodies by ear, and both classical and non-classical styles. Laurel seeks to foster in her students a strong musical awareness and appreciation, in an environment that empowers the student to discover his or her individual creative expression. Though not everyone will be a soloist, Laurel believes that it is possible for every student to find his or her musical voice when a willingness to learn is combined with a teaching method that focuses on each individual student's learning style.

About Laurel

Laurel Thomsen studied classically with many fine teachers and in a variety of youth orchestras around the California Central Coast, the San Francisco Bay Area, at the University of Montana-Missoula, and in Italy. In 2003, at the age of 21, several viola students began requesting to take lessons with her, so she bought a viola and officially learned it as a second instrument. Around this same time Laurel began exploring alternative styles and approaches to playing in earnest. Though she had always supplemented her classical music studies with an exploration of fiddle styles and world music genres, she now began building on the foundation of technique she had cultivated in her classical training, developing her own sound and discovering her own expressions.


Though Laurel continues to play classically, at weddings, events, and in orchestras, she is frequently sought out by songwriters and bands for her ability to find the voice of the violin in all genres of music. She has played in celtic, pop-rock, folk-rock, and tribute bands, backed up songwriters in the folk, jazz, cabaret, country, and latin genres, done studio work, accompanied Sufi dancers, created traditional Indian devotional music for Kirtans, and for three years served as the main performer in the Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital music-therapy program.


Since 1996, Laurel has taught hundreds of students in the Monterey, Santa Barbara, and Missoula, Montana areas, primarily as a private string instructor, but also as a youth orchestra string coach and clinician in schools.