Miss DeLay: Portrait of Beloved Violin Teacher Dorothy DeLay

Dorothy DeLay (1917-2002) was the first woman to become an internationally-acclaimed master teacher of the violin. Her thousands of students (at the Juilliard School in New York, the Aspen Music Festival, the University of Cincinnati, the Philadelphia College of Performing Arts, the New England Conservatory in Boston and the Royal College of Music in London) included Itzhak Perlman, Cho-Liang Lin, Midori, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg (who appear in this profile), Shlomo Mintz, Nigel Kennedy, and Sarah Chang. Many of her students now teach at major conservatories around the world.


Author Helen Epstein first met Miss DeLay as a journalist visiting Aspen in 1974 and spent many happy hours in her studio at Juilliard and at the home she shared with her husband, author Edwin Newhouse.


Miss DeLay is one of thirteen chapters in Music Talks: the lives of classical musicians, which the New York Times Sunday Book Review called "an illuminating introduction to the trials and triumphs of the classical musician."