Coming to Schools

Cookie Segelstein, Featured Violinist

Cookie (Marlene) Segelstein received a Bachelor’s Degree in Music from the University of Missouri in 1981, and a Master’s Degree in Viola from Yale University in 1984 where she studied with Raphael Hillyer (founding member of the Julliard String Quartet) and the late Jesse Levine. She played under the great Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa at Tanglewood, and studied chamber music with Eugene Lehner  of the Kolisch Quartet. In 1984, Cookie joined the New Haven Symphony where she became Assistant Principal Violist in 1991, a position she held until moving to California in 2010.  In the spring of 2010, she performed a piece commissioned for her by the orchestra and written by composer Mark Kuss, “Viola Concertino”.  Cookie has toured the world with her trio Veretski Pass that specializes in the 19th and 20th Century Jewish instrumental folk music of the Carpathian mountains. They played to a sold out audience at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and regularly tour Germany, Austria and Switzerland, playing concerts and teaching workshops. She recorded the violin music for the Jewish wedding episode of HBO’s “Sex and the City”, has recorded many CD’s as an expert on Jewish violin style, and written many music books of  historical transcriptions. On the board of the San Francisco chapter of American String Teachers Association, and a member of MTAC (Music Teacher’s Association of California), Cookie teaches violin and viola students of all ages and levels in both folk and Classical styles.