Louise Zeitlen. Photo by Meredith Bradley.

Louise Zeitlin, a violist and music educator who has been on the faculty of the Oberlin Community Music School since its inception in 2003, has been named the school’s director. She began her new post on July 1, 2007.

Zeitlin’s teaching career encompasses all ages and levels, from young children to college music majors. Her former students have attended some of America’s finest music schools, including the Juilliard School, the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and Northwestern University. In addition to teaching children, she is lecturer in viola at Baldwin-Wallace College.

Zeitlin, who has studied with Heidi Castleman, Jesse Levine, and the Tokyo Quartet, has held teaching positions at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Carleton College, and the MacPhail Center for the Arts, among others. During the summer, she teaches and performs at the Brevard Music Center in North Carolina. She is principal viola with the Baldwin-Wallace College Bach Festival and has played principal viola with the Brevard Music Center Orchestra. Past orchestral performances include concerts with the Minnesota Orchestra, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Minnesota Opera, the Chicago String Ensemble, and the Chicago Opera Theatre.

She is a founding member and past president of the Ohio Viola Society and is the secretary of the American Viola Society. She lives in Oberlin with her husband, James Howsmon, Professor of Instrumental Accompanying at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and their two children.

The Oberlin Conservatory of Music’s Community Music School is dedicated to providing students with an exceptional educational and artistic experience while fostering a lifelong appreciation of and commitment to excellence in music. The school offers students of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds the opportunity to express their artistic creativity through the study and creation of music; in 2004-05 the school enrolled approximately 75 students, and awarded more than $4,000 in scholarship assistance. The Community Music School offers pre-collegiate instruction in strings, piano, winds, percussion, and voice, as well as theory and composition. In addition to private lessons, dynamic group programs such as Piano Lab, MusicPlay (for children ages 3 to 5), and the String Preparatory Program, are taught by highly qualified musicians and teachers.