Teaching

Erick Friedman is at present a full Professor of Violin and Chamber Music at Yale University School of Music. His long and distinguished career as a pedagogue began with an association with the North Carolina School of the Arts and the Manhattan School of Music, where he held the Elman Chair. In 1983, Mr. Friedman was appointed professor and artist-in-residence at Southern Methodist University, a post he held for five years until he joined Yale in 1989.
Click here for a RealMedia videoclip of Mr. Friedman teaching the violin.

Erick Friedman's teaching philosophy he believes to be simple. Generally, the violin is taught to students with the primary thrust being one of success in a room or 'studio,' which could be considered shortsighted in the professional world. Since so few fine teachers, who do noblely and selflessly dedicate themselves to the difficult world of the violin, have had the good fortune to have had any meaningful performing experience, or by necessity to have had it in a limited way, they might lack the understanding of this career, i.e. an understanding of the concert hall with its attendant psychological and physical affect on mind, body, and hands with respect to a lifetime.

Friedman believes that his more than fifty years on the concert stage performing, recording, and conducting, along with his many years as a student first with Ivan Galamian, then more extensively with both Nathan Milstein and Jascha Heifetz, the only violinist to have been a private student of both these masters, has given him a unique teaching opportunity as Full Professor of Music at the Yale University School of Music in New Haven, Connecticut.