Laura is on the faculty of Centenary College where she has taught violin, chamber music, string methods, and string pedagogy in addition to teaching violin students in the Centenary Suzuki School. She is also Director and Founder of the 150 member Centenary Suzuki School. She received her B.M. and M.M. degrees in violin performance from the University of Texas at Austin where she studied with Leonard Posner, longtime Dallas Symphony Concertmaster. Summer studies were at The Meadowmount School of Music in New York (Paul Makanowitzky), University of Maine at Orono Chamber Music School (Joseph Fuchs), and the Round Top Festival in Texas. She also taught in the nationally recognized U.T. String Project under Director PhyllisYoung (then President of the American String Teachers Association), which became a model in developing the Centenary Suzuki School.

Laura received several summers of Suzuki training at the American Suzuki Institute in Wisconsin. She was privileged to receive teacher training under Dr. Shinichi Suzuki when he came from Japan to the American Suzuki Institute. In starting the CSS, she made trips to observe the teaching of Suzuki teachers: Kay Slone (author of Rarely Too Old/Too Young To Twinkle), Joe Cleveland (Louisiana Suzuki pioneer), and Louise Behrend (School for Strings in New York). She has attended numerous Suzuki Institutes and teacher training sessions throughout the country, serving as a clinician in Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Laura began the Centenary Suzuki School in 1977, and as its director has also continually organized opportunities for current students to perform. In addition to helping organize community performances and numerous concerts/solo recitals per year at the Centenary College campus, Laura has also organized, with the Shreveport Suzuki Parents Association, frequent regional Suzuki workshops in which nationally known Suzuki clinicians are brought in to work with area students. She has co-ordinated string master classes given by numerous guest soloists with the Shreveport Symphony.

Laura has been a participant several times at the Starling-Delay Summer Symposium of Violin Studies at Juilliard in New York. She has observed numerous violin master classes at the Curtis Institute, where her cellist son, John-Henry, is currently enrolled.

Laura performs regularly with the Baroque Artists of Shreveport and the Shreveport Symphony and has performed with the Memphis Symphony, the Austin Symphony, and is a former concertmaster of the Longview, Texas Symphony. She has been a guest soloist with the Hurley Chamber Orchestra, the Longview Symphony, and the Acadiana Symphony (Lafayette). She performs frequently at First United Methodist Church as well as other churches. . Her students have played in orchestras at Rice University, Indiana University, Cincinnati Conservatory, Cincinnati Symphony, and the Johannesburg Philharmonic in South Africa. Former students have also participated in summer festivals at Sewanee, Brevard, Aspen, Interlochen, Oberlin, Chicago, and Encore (Cleveland Institute) as well as string ensembles at Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Brown, Southern Methodist University, Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Centenary College.

Contact Info

Laura Crawford

Lecturer in Music

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