Sophie Dean Therrell

Sophie grew up in a musical family in New Orleans, Louisiana. starting violin lessons at the age of four. During high school, she studied violin at the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts, and in the summers, at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute.  Sophie earned a bachelor's degree from Princeton University where she studied European Cultural History and sang with the Princeton Katzenjammers, a co-ed jazz a capella group.  After college, Sophie went home to New Orleans to become a middle school history teacher where she met her husband, Ryan, the computer teacher.  After two years of classroom teaching, Sophie felt pulled back to her violin.  She would get home from school and play Brahms rather than design her lesson plans and grade papers.  Thanks to her amazing husband who agreed to foot the bills while she practiced, Sophie quit her job, and for the next two years, played the violin from ten in the morning until six at night.  She found a wonderful  teacher at this time, the amazing Valerie Poulette, who helped Sophie learn to play the violin with ease, freedom and joy.  Along with all of this practicing, Sophie auditioned for and was accepted into the Baton Rouge Symphony, where she played for two seasons. From there, she made her way to the University of Texas at Austin, for a masters degree in violin performance, and moved to Eugene in 2004. She joined the first violin section of the Eugene Symphony Orchestra, the Oregon Mozart Players, with whom she is currently principal second, and the Eugene Opera Orchestra. Sophie quickly integrated into the violin teaching community and maintains a thriving studio in South Eugene.  When she is not playing or teaching violin, she is teaching Music Together, or hanging out with her two kids, her husband, and her dog, Melly (aka "the gremlin.")