About Heather Kaye Broadbent
Violinist · Pedagogue · Founder of the Broadbent School of Violin Artistry
Heather Kaye Broadbent is an international classical violinist and pedagogue whose life with the violin has spanned professional performance, orchestral leadership, solo appearances, private teaching, research, writing, and more than three decades of work with violinists.
Her career has taken her from concert halls and orchestras throughout the United States to performances in Italy and Bulgaria, while her teaching has reached violinists around the world.
At the heart of both is the same pursuit: beautiful sound, thoughtful musicianship, and a lifelong study of the art of violin playing.
A Life in Performance
Heather received her Bachelor of Music in Violin Performance and Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from the University of Colorado Boulder, where her studies included work with Ozzie Lehnert, William Starr, Jennifer John, and members of the Takács String Quartet. She later continued her violin studies for five years with internationally renowned violinist Rachel Barton Pine.
For more than a decade, Heather maintained an active freelance performing career throughout Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa, performing with symphony, chamber, ballet, opera, and festival orchestras.
Her professional orchestral work included the Illinois Symphony, Wisconsin Philharmonic, Rockford Symphony, Green Bay Symphony, Milwaukee Ballet, Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, Des Moines Metropolitan Opera, and numerous other ensembles. Her American freelance career ultimately encompassed more than 25 orchestras across three states.
Heather has held orchestral leadership positions including Guest Associate Concertmaster of the Dubuque Symphony, Guest Concertmaster of the Chicago Virtuosi Orchestra, Guest and Assistant Concertmaster of the Racine Symphony, Guest Concertmaster of the Full Score Chamber Orchestra, Concertmaster of Racine Choral Arts, and Concertmaster of the Festival Arts Chamber Orchestra.
Heather Broadbent performing with the Gabrovo Chamber Orchestra, Bulgaria.
Her international performing career has included performances in Italy and Bulgaria. In 2011, she served as chamber orchestra concertmaster for the Musica Negli Horti Festival in Italy.
In Bulgaria, Heather performed with the Gabrovo Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Ivan Stoyanov, appearing repeatedly as a soloist as well as a member of the ensemble. She was also invited by Konstantin Ilievsky to perform with the Yambol Chamber Orchestra under his direction.
In 2019, Heather recorded with the Dianopolis Chamber Orchestra of Yambol on its debut album, Reminiscences, under conductor Konstantin Ilievski. The recording featured soloists Krasimira Sultanova, violin, and Tsvetan Nedyalkov, guitar. The project was subsequently recognized with Bulgaria’s prestigious Crystal Lyre, one of the country’s distinguished honors for musical achievement.
These engagements in Europe became an important continuation of the professional performing life she had established in the United States.
Music Beyond the Concert Hall
Heather’s performing life has never been limited to the concert stage.
Alongside her orchestral career, she created Strings, a successful contracting business providing live music for weddings, receptions, cocktail hours, and private events.
In Kenosha, Wisconsin, she also created a three-concert salon series inspired by the atmosphere of the Ravinia Festival — intimate performances designed for audiences who wanted to experience the pleasure of a summer concert series in the setting of a private home. The series brought musicians and audiences together in a more personal setting, extending the experience of live classical music beyond the traditional concert hall.
Her performing life has also included chamber music, recitals, solo appearances and — in one particularly adventurous chapter — playing in a rock band.
Today, Heather continues that tradition, bringing live violin to weddings, celebrations, private events, and concert settings in the United States and Europe.
Performing with the Yambol Chamber Orchestra, Bulgaria.
Performer & Pedagogue
Heather’s work as a teacher developed alongside her performing career rather than after it.
The concert hall and teaching studio have continually informed one another. Performing reveals what technique must ultimately accomplish; teaching demands an understanding of how that technique can be developed.
“Heather Broadbent is a terrific performer and a great asset to our performance.”
— Paul Vermel, Music Director & Conductor, Northwest Symphony Orchestra
This relationship between performance, technique, listening, and musical understanding remains central to Heather’s work today.
Paul Vermel, Music Director & Conductor of the Northwest Symphony Orchestra
A Teacher of Violinists
Heather with students from her private violin studio in Wisconsin.
Heather began teaching professionally in 2001 while building her performing career.
Her private studio grew from a handful of students to approximately 30 violinists. Her students earned awards in district and state competitions, won concerto competitions, and served in leadership positions in youth and school orchestras. In 2010, one of her students performed at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
Heather’s work as a teacher and mentor was also honored through the naming of The Heather Broadbent High School State Honors Orchestra Concert Master Chair within the Wisconsin School Music Association State Honors Project — a recognition dedicated to her as a private teacher, mentor, and friend.
As technology made serious study across distances increasingly possible, Heather began teaching violinists online, extending the work of her private studio beyond geographical boundaries.
That experience became the beginning of a much larger body of online teaching, writing, courses, and violin pedagogy.
Broadbent School of Violin Artistry
Heather founded the Broadbent School of Violin Artistry as a home for the body of teaching work she has developed through decades of performing, studying, researching, and teaching the violin.
Rather than treating violin technique as a collection of isolated skills, the School approaches violin playing as a coordinated art.
Study encompasses:
Foundations · Listening & Intonation · Tone · Music Literacy & Rhythm · Technique · Positions · Repertoire · Musicality · Practice
The School is rooted in the great traditions of classical violin pedagogy while recognizing something equally important: the violinist studying today is a human being, not a nineteenth-century conservatory exercise machine.
Technique, musical understanding, attentive listening, intelligent practice, and physical freedom must develop together.
Teaching Philosophy
Heather’s approach to violin playing rests on principles developed through her own experience as both performer and teacher.
Technique Should Serve the Music
Technique is not the destination. It gives the violinist the freedom to communicate musical ideas with clarity, beauty, and reliability.
The Body Matters
The violin is demanding enough without fighting one’s own body. Efficient, balanced movement allows technique to become freer and more dependable.
Listening Comes First
Beautiful violin playing begins with hearing — pitch, resonance, harmony, phrasing, articulation, and the relationship between notes.
Practice Should Have Purpose
More hours do not automatically produce better playing. Thoughtful practice identifies a musical or technical problem, understands it, and gives the body and ear the opportunity to solve it.
Study Never Ends
There is no point at which a serious musician has finally “finished” learning the violin.
Heather remains a practicing and studying violinist herself, continually returning to scales, etudes, repertoire, historical pedagogy, and the fundamental questions of violin playing.
That continuing curiosity lies at the heart of her teaching.
What Colleagues Say
“I have had the pleasure of conducting Heather Broadbent in numerous orchestras since 2003.”
Conductor Richard Haglund appointed Heather Principal Second Violin of the Erato Chamber Orchestra and later Concertmaster of the Festival Orchestra Valdorcia in Italy, describing her leadership, musicianship, and ability to work within an international ensemble.
He has also worked with Heather extensively as a violin teacher and sectional coach:
“Ms. Broadbent is able to quickly assess the needs of any range of ability of student, give proper demonstration and achieve immediate positive results… She is simply a Master Teacher!”
— Richard Haglund, Conductor, USA
Working with Violinists Around the World
Violinists who first connected with Heather through online study and later worked with her in person.
Today, Heather’s teaching reaches violinists around the world through her educational writing, courses, books, YouTube instruction, private lessons, and the Broadbent School of Violin Artistry.
She has developed a particular affinity for adult violinists who take their study seriously — whether they are discovering the violin later in life, returning after ten, twenty, or even forty years, or have never stopped playing but know there is another level of musical and technical understanding they want to reach.
Some of these online relationships have extended beyond the virtual studio, with students later traveling to work with Heather in person.
A Life Shaped by the Violin
The violin has taken Heather through orchestras and concert halls, teaching studios and festivals, from the American Midwest to Italy and Bulgaria.
It has also continually demanded change.
A serious wrist injury in 2010 interrupted an intensely busy performing and teaching career and fundamentally changed Heather’s understanding of the relationship between the violinist and the instrument. Her recovery reinforced a principle that remains central to her work:
We are the instrument to the instrument.
The health, awareness, curiosity, and life of the person holding the violin matter.
Over the years, Heather’s work has continued to evolve — through performance, teaching, writing, research, and an increasingly deep exploration of the traditions and principles of violin pedagogy.
Through all of those chapters — orchestral violinist, concertmaster, soloist, teacher, author, and researcher — one thing has remained remarkably constant.
The violin.
Study & Performance
Whether Heather is preparing music for a performance, researching historical violin pedagogy, working privately with a violinist, or developing studies for the Broadbent School, the work comes from the same place:
a lifelong fascination with what the violin can do — and what we can become through studying it.
Study with Heather
For violinists seeking serious, thoughtful study:
Explore the Broadbent School of Violin Artistry
Hear Heather Perform
For recordings, weddings, private events, and performance information:
Listen to Heather
“I know Heather Kaye to be an excellent violinist who has a great deal to offer as a unique violin pedagogue. I have had the pleasure of hearing her in concert and as a member of the orchestras that I have conducted. I highly recommend her books and courses to anyone who has a serious interest in gaining her insights into the world of violin playing.”
— Philip Greenburg, Conductor, USA