Education
M.Mus, The Hartt School
B.Mus with honors, minor in French, Boston University
Sarah Washburn is an active chamber and orchestral musician, and a dedicated teacher to students of all ages. Sarah teaches violin, viola and chamber music at The Hartt School Community Division, and was previously the Chair of the Traditional String Department. She also teaches violin and viola at Eastern CT State University.
Chamber music has always been her passion, and she is a founding member of the West End String Quartet and the Azul String Quartet. With the Azul String Quartet, Washburn teaches at Chamber Music SummerFest at Hartt. In 2024, the Azul Quartet was sponsored by Performing Arts of Northeast Connecticut to bring an interactive string quartet experience to elementary students. The program culminated in “Conversations with Friends”, an educational program about communicating through music, at The Loos Center for the Arts.
As a chamber artist, she has performed at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival in Vail, Colorado, SoundFest on Cape Cod, at Hartford New Music Festival, The New Britain Museum of American Art, The Arts Institute of Western Maine, Connecticut College, Trinity College, and at Wesleyan University. With the West End String Quartet, she has taught chamber music at Wesleyan, and maintains a strong connection with their composition department, including premiering many of the quartets of Professor Neely Bruce, reading and recording student works, and presenting a program of American Music from the late 1800’s as part of America 250. The WESQ was awarded an Encore Grant from the American Composers Forum to premier a new work by Ruby Fulton.
As an orchestral musician, Washburn has performed in the Hartford, New Haven, Waterbury and Vermont Symphony Orchestras, at New Hampshire Music Festival and Caspian Music Festival, and as concertmaster of the Manchester and Hartt School Symphony Orchestras. She has performed in the pit at Hartford Stage, Goodspeed Opera House, and for the Broadway national tours of “The Book of Mormon” and “Suffs!”. She performs regularly as a soloist on Wesleyan’s Ad Hoc Bach series. A strong proponent of contemporary music, she has premiered works by many composers throughout the northeast, including her husband, Dr. Ryan Jesperson.
Washburn holds a B.Mus with honors from Boston University, with a minor in French, and a M.Mus from The Hartt School, where she studied in the 20/20 Honors Chamber Music program. She has Suzuki Violin Pedagogy training through Book 8 with Teri Einfeldt, Christie Felsing, and Carrie Reuning-Hummel, and Suzuki Viola Pedagogy training through Book 7 with Betsy Stuen-Walker. She also has attended the Indiana University String Academy with Mimi Zweig, and the Starling-Delay Symposium at Juilliard. She lives in West Hartford with her husband, their two musical kids, and less musical dog.
Sarah Washburn is a devoted teacher to students of all ages. Her nurturing, responsive teaching style is sensitive to the needs of each student, while simultaneously pushing them to excel. She believes that, given the right tools, everyone is capable of expressing themselves beautifully through music. Washburn is fully committed to helping her students of all abilities play and perform with ease, balanced technique, and beautiful tone. She believes that this strong foundation is essential to future musical development, and guides her students to high standards of excellence at every level.
Influenced by pedagogical studies with many teachers, Washburn’s teaching technique is rooted in the mother-tongue approach of the Suzuki Method, which she studied under Teri Einfeldt. The ability to learn by ear, and then later connect to the written page, hearkens back to all aural traditions of musical learning, including the Irish-American fiddle music she learned from her father. She believes that parent participation in the musical learning experience is a valuable asset, and she enjoys a strong connection with her students and their families. Her teaching style also draws on other influences, including her studies with Mimi Zweig and Bonnie Black, and she uses a wide range of teaching materials and repertoire in her lessons. A life-long student, she is always looking for opportunities to learn from her colleagues and grow as a teacher and musician.