Violinist & registered Suzuki teacher Maeve O’Hara has been a member of our Naperville Suzuki School faculty since 2015. Maeve relocated to the Chicago area specifically to work for WSSTE from Brooklyn, NY. Her favorite projects since joining our faculty have been leading Creative Ability Development improvisation classes, serving on the Chamber Music Camp faculty, and most recently in 2018, co-founding Suzuki Early Childhood Chicago with WSSTE Associate Director, Victoria Szczepaniak. Following her Suzuki Early Childhood Education (SECE) training, she has been absolutely fascinated by the link between Suzuki education, neuroscience, and its ability to prepare children for all learning from birth. In 2018, she was a presenter at the Creative Ability Development Conference. Prior to her move to Chicago, she served on the faculties of the Suzuki divisions within Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, the Queens College Lawrence Eisman Center for Preparatory Studies in Music, Greenwich House Music School, and has also maintained a private studio.

Maeve completed a Master of Music degree in Violin Performance from Purchase College Conservatory of Music, and a Bachelor of Music degree in Violin Performance from Ithaca College. In 2018, she completed her year one of Suzuki Early Childhood Education training with Sharon Jones. She also, since moving to Chicago in 2015, completed and repeated many of her Suzuki Book long-term training with WSSTE faculty members, Edward Kreitman, Nancy Jackson, and Thomas Wermuth; affirming her pedagogical techniques and refining her previous Suzuki training. She completed long-term Suzuki training at School for Strings with Allen Lieb and Ekaterina Gerson as of 2014, and also studied long-term with Sandy Reuning while in Ithaca. She is forever indebted to her primary teachers, Alice Kay Kanack, Susan Waterbury, and Calvin Wiersma, and is grateful to have studied additionally with Maureen Smith at the Royal College of Music, London.

Her life as performer has led her to renown concert halls such as Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall, and also internationally (China, UK, Ireland). Recent highlights include a performance on WNYC’s Soundcheck with Irish singer/songwriter Julie Feeney, performing the Mendelssohn Octet at Brooklyn’s Bargemusic, serving as principal second with the String Orchestra of Brooklyn, and two tours through China with the Manhattan Symphonie Orchestra. She has performed in masterclasses for Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Gil Shaham, Rachel Barton Pine, the Orion String Quartet, the Tashi Ensemble, and Ying Quartet. She served as concertmaster and principal second of the orchestras at Purchase College and Ithaca College, and won the 2012 Purchase College concerto competition with the Tchaikovsky concerto.

Maeve has adjusted to life in Chicago quite well, loving our winters, and lives in charming Oak Park.