Save the Date!
Thank you to all who made LASI 2024 a wonderful event! We look forward to seeing you next year at LASI 2025!
Student Programs run June 16-20th, 2025
Teacher Programs run June 14-21st, 2025
Registration for all programs opens February 15th, 2025 and closes April 15th, 2025.
What to Expect at LASI
Welcome to the Los Angeles Suzuki Institute. Our institute is a family oriented Suzuki music summer program for students, parents & teachers of all ages & levels. We currently offer programs for students and teachers who play violin, viola, cello, double bass, and guitar. LASI offers a nurturing music experience held on the beautiful campus of Pitzer College in Claremont, CA.
We were thrilled to have the following guests at LASI 2024:
Guest Artist, violist Juliet White-Smith
Special Guest, violinist Karolina Protsenko
Guest Composer/Conductor, Richard Meyer
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LASI is a place for students to thrive and experience playing music within the larger Los Angeles community. Our Foundational Program serves students in beginner levels, while PREP students prepares intermediate students to matriculate into our Young Artist Program by adding more advanced, age-appropriate courses such as Chamber Music and advanced electives.
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Young Artists is for advanced students ages 13 & up. Young Artist students receive ensemble & chamber music experience, as well as advanced music electives.
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A cornerstone of the Suzuki Method is ensuring that teachers have excellent, uniform training from the very beginning. LASI prides itself in bringing the best Teacher Trainers to teach Unit Training, Supplementary and Enrichment courses for many instruments offered through the SAA.
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Participants have the option to register for dormitory accommodations and/or meal plans during the week of LASI. We highly recommend commuters get a Lunch Only plan to socialize with other attendees.
2024 Guest Artist • Juliet White-Smith
Juliet White-Smith is an accomplished violist, an engaging and dynamic teacher, and an expert string pedagogue. With performing and professional teaching careers spanning over three and a half decades, she has performed in solo, chamber, and orchestral settings throughout the United States and in Europe, Asia, and Africa. She has performed as a member of the Texas Chamber Orchestra, with the Houston Grand Opera, Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra, and the Rochester Philharmonic. She is regularly engaged as an invited presenter for music organizations around the country and across the globe including as a featured presenter and master class clinician at the American String Teachers Association annual conference, for the 75th Anniversary Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic, and as a recitalist and presenter for conferences of the American Viola Society and at International Viola Congresses. She has served as adjudicator for prominent career-advancing competitions including the William Primrose International Viola Competition and the Yellow Spring Chamber Music Competition.
Her views on pedagogy, talent, and effective practice have been featured in The Strad, Strings Magazine, Journal of the American Viola Society, and American String Teacher. She has appeared in interviews in the Boston Globe and on WBUR Boston. She served as President of the American Viola Society from 2008-2011 and was on the Artist-Faculty at the Brevard Music Festival 2018-23. Her 2009 album Fashionably Late: Juliet White-Smith Debuts! features the premiere recording of Pulitzer Prize winner George Walker’s Viola Sonata (1989) and is available on the Centaur Records label (CRC 2982).
White-Smith is passionate about the health and wellness of musicians. She is a certified yoga instructor (RYT 200) and is also licensure trainee to become a Body Mapping Educator. She also enjoys cycling whether it is on bike paths in Ohio or Colorado or virtually around the globe.
A native of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, White-Smith joined the faculty at The Ohio State University School of Music in 2012 having previously held positions at the University of Northern Colorado and Western Michigan University.
White-Smith earned the Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the Eastman School of Music and is a graduate of the University of Houston (MM) and Louisiana State University (BM in violin).
2024 Special Guest • Karolina Protsenko
We are thrilled to have a special guest visiting LASI this summer, YouTube star Karolina Protsenko! She will be on campus to give a performance and talk about her career, and will finish off her visit with some jams at Fun Night. We look forward to having her at LASI 2024!
You can learn more about Karolina on her social media profiles:
2024 Guest Conductor • Richard Meyer
We are thrilled to have our guest composer and conductor Richard Meyer return to LASI 2024! Richard Meyer’s original works for youth orchestra will be performed by each of the student orchestra groups. If your child is eligible for orchestra, don’t forget to choose it as your first elective choice!
Richard Meyer is a highly sought after music educator and maintains an active schedule as a guest conductor and clinician. For 35 years he taught string students at the elementary, middle school, and high school levels in the public schools. For 22 of those years, he directed the orchestras at Oak Avenue Intermediate School in Temple City, California, growing the program from 29 string students to 200 and was in charge of the city’s elementary string program. In 2009, Mr. Meyer implemented the “Giving Bach” program at his school which has garnered national attention for its innovative ways of using interactive concerts to bring music into the lives of special needs and inner-city school students throughout Southern California.
He was the music director of the Pasadena Youth Symphony Orchestra for 16 years, conducting them in performances in New York, Washington D.C., Vienna, Australia, and Canada. He has been a featured clinician at the A.S.T.A. National Conference, Texas Orchestra Directors’ Association Conference, Australia National Band and Orchestra Conference and string teachers’ workshops at Ohio State University and Birch Bay, Washington. He has also guest-conducted All-State and Honor Orchestras in several states and abroad.
In addition to his teaching and conducting assignments, Mr. Meyer is a nationally-recognized, best-selling composer with over 200 compositions and arrangements in print, and for 16 years served as string editor for Alfred Publishing Company. He is the co-author of several string method books, including the popular “String Explorer” Series and “Sight-read It for Strings”. He and his wife, Rose, live in Sierra Madre, California and have three daughters and four grandchildren.
“Where love is deep, much can be accomplished.”
— Shin'ichi Suzuki