Born and raised in New York and based in Chicago since 2020, Nathan Sonnenfeld began playing the violin at the age of five using the Suzuki Method. He is currently studying violin with David Taylor, Assistant Concertmaster of the Chicago Symphony. Nathan received his Master of Music in Violin Performance and Suzuki Pedagogy at The Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University, a Master of Music in String Pedagogy at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and his Bachelor of Music from Montclair State University’s John J. Cali School of Music. His primary violin teachers have been Mary Ann Mumm, Jay Christy, Liba Shacht, Shannon Thomas, Gabriel Pegis, and Diane Duraffourg Robinson. He has played in masterclasses and lessons for Ida Kavafian, Weigang Li, Joseph Silverstein, Joel Smirnoff, and Madeline Adkins. With a passion for teaching, Nathan studied Suzuki Pedagogy and completed long term teacher training at the School for Strings and Roosevelt University. His primary teacher trainers were Allen Lieb and Ann Montzka-Smelzer and he did additional studies with Edward Kreitman and Linda Case. During the summers, Nathan has participated in the Brevard Music Center, Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival, Miami Music Festival and Eastern Music Festival.

An aspiring conductor, He has participated in a number of workshops and previously studied with James Setapen, Dr. Jun Kim, Dr. Shelly Axelson, and James Fellenbaum.

An active orchestral musician, Nathan was Assistant Principal 2nd Violin of the University Community Orchestra at University of Wisconsin Milwaukee and has been a member of the New York Repertory Orchestra, Opera Orchestra of Montclair, and the Symphony Orchestras of Montclair State University, Chicago College of the Performing Arts, and University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. He has played under the direction of some of the most esteemed and respected conductors in the world, including Gerard Schwarz, Ken Lam, Sebastian Lang Lessing, Rune Bergmann, Mark Gibson, JoAnn Falletta, Tito Munoz, Steven Reineke, and Keith Lockhart. He has performed in some of the most prominent concert halls in the world, including Carnegie Hall and David Geffen Hall (then Avery Fischer Hall) at Lincoln Center in New York, Symphony Center and Auditorium Theater in Chicago, the Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University in New Jersey, the Adrienne Arsht Center Ziff Ballet Opera House in Miami, Florida and the Cathedral Metropolitina in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Active as a teacher in the Chicago area, he is on the faculty for the Merit School of Music, teaching both private lessons and group classes. He previously taught for Montclair’s Preparatory Center for the Arts, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Bach to Rock Music School, Chicago School of Musical Arts, City Strings & Piano Chicago and Chicago Center for Music Education. He has also worked for the New York Philharmonic, the Paterson Music Project, Kaufman Music Center, Tarisio Auctions, and Sam Ash Music Stores. Nathan’s teachers have ingrained in him a strong passion for playing and teaching the violin with a pedagogical lineage extending from great violinists such as Josef Gingold, Ivan Galamian, Tadeusz Wroński, Dorothy DeLay, Franco Gulli, Jascha Heifetz, Eugène Ysaÿe, and Shinichi Suzuki.

Nathan plays on an American violin made in 1996 by Vanna So (previously owned by a member of the Chicago Symphony) and uses a John Norwood Lee bow.