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To understand and cause to be understood. This is the aim to which the performing artist must aspire. - Leopold Auer



Melissa Thatcher graduated with a Masters in Music, violin performance, from the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College in New York.  She received the Chamber Music Live Award, the Graduating Master’s Award, and the Discimus ut Serviamus Award during her studies there. A featured soloist of the Copland Symphony Orchestra, Melissa won the Concerto Competition at the Aaron Copland School as a first year student. She has performed across North America and Europe, making her debut at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall with the New York Symphony Ensemble.
 
She completed post-graduate studies in Southern France under the tutelage of Professor Burkhard Godhoff (faculty at The Shanghai Conservatory)
With a thriving studio that spans the ages of two to eighteen, Melissa’s students have won scholarships at such festivals and schools as The Aspen Music Festival and School, Domaine Forget, Eastern Music Festival, Bowdoin International Music Festival, Heifetz International Music Institute, Foulger International Festival, and gone on to study privately with renowned artists such as the Shanghai String Quartet, Herbert Greenberg, and Yehonatan Berick.
 
In 2013 Melissa founded Thatcher Theory, a technical regimen designed to bridge the gap from intermediate to advanced left hand technique.
 
Melissa currently resides in Santa Rosa, California, with her husband and two young children.
Thatcher Theory
 

Created for students who are beginning 3-octave technique, Thatcher Theory is a technical regimen that contains all you need to master the violin fingerboard. 

 

Acclaimed for producing results, the Thatcher Theory process provides a step-by-step guide that introduces and solidifies 3-octave work on the fingerboard in a way that is both thorough and guaranteed to produce confidence. 

 

Students who work through this method will develop finger accuracy, clean intonation, and speed. This system establishes a life-long warm-up process that becomes a foundation from which to proceed into all intermediate and advanced literature. 

 

Organized by Melissa Thatcher as a stepping-stone into the Flesch Scale System, Thatcher Theory gives students beginning 3-octave scales a daily guide that establishes proficiency and makes practicing the entire circle of fifths easy.

 

Learn more at www.thatchertheory.com

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