Erin Raye Dryer is a professional Violist and Violinist who has recently relocated to the Central Eastern Florida Coast from Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she has been based for the past 10 years. She has been performing in the area with the New Mexico Philharmonic, Opera Southwest, the Santa Fe Symphony, Santa Fe Pro Musica, Performance Santa Fe and Chatter Albuquerque among others in the area since 2012. She has recently served as Acting Principal with the Northwest Florida Symphony Orchestra, has served as Acting Principal Viola with the Helena Symphony in 2014 and was the winner of the Principal Viola position in 2015. Erin has attended and performed in music festivals both in The States and in Europe. In 2014, she served as Associate Concertmaster for the Spazio Music Festival Opera Orchestra in Orvieto, Italy in 2014. In 2015, she was the Runner-Up in the Solo Bach Competition with the University of New Mexico Summer Music Institute. And as a young performer, she was the winner of a young artist concerto competition with the Casper Symphony in 2005.

She holds a Bachelors of Music in Viola Performance from the University of Oregon, and a Masters of Music in Violin Performance, Viola Performance and Suzuki Pedagogy from the University of New Mexico. She has studied with the teachers Jennifer Cowell, Carrie Krause, Fritz Gearhart, Leslie Straka, Daniel Gay, Kimberly Fredenburgh and Carmelo de los Santos.

In addition to performing, Erin has also maintained an active private and group teaching practice over the last 10 years. She has her long-term training from the Suzuki Association of the Americas in all 10 books of the Suzuki Violin Method as well as training in the Music Mind Games method for music theory and general music education. In January 2017, Erin received the Emerging Teacher Award from the American String Teachers Association for “an enthusiastic and fun-loving approach to employing string pedagogy and performance training in classroom and studio teaching in Albuquerque.” Her private students have been accepted into the Albuquerque Youth Symphony Program and the New Mexico All State Conference, as well as gone on to minor in music at Universities in the Southwest. Erin has most recently taught with the Albuquerque Public Schools as the Orchestra Director of two middle schools.

When Erin isn’t teaching, performing or practicing, she enjoys dancing West Coast Swing or Argentine Tango, hiking, sketching, gardening and has studied Combat Hapkido and Grappling.