Welcome!
I'm an internationally touring violinist and violist, recording artist, educator, composer, podcaster, and writer, passionate about exploring the range of emotions and genres a bowed-stringed instrument is capable of, through performance, teaching, and recording. Whether I'm performing on stage or at an event, with a student, or in the recording studio, I enjoy diving into the creative unknown, and from interpreting a Classical masterwork, to arranging a fiddle tune, or composing string parts for a singer-songwriter, figuring out how to make the notes come to life.
Born and raised in Monterey, California and based in the Santa Cruz Mountains, I've been performing around the California Central Coast and San Francisco Bay Area since I was a teenager, with groups ranging from symphony orchestras to bands and singer-songwriters. For several years prior to Covid-19, I toured North America and Europe with Canadian songwriter Dan Frechette as our duo Dan Frechette & Laurel Thomsen. We'll be releasing our fifth album as a duo in 2022 and hope to resume touring soon.
Born and raised in Monterey, California and based in the Santa Cruz Mountains, I've been performing around the California Central Coast and San Francisco Bay Area since I was a teenager, with groups ranging from symphony orchestras to bands and singer-songwriters. For several years prior to Covid-19, I toured North America and Europe with Canadian songwriter Dan Frechette as our duo Dan Frechette & Laurel Thomsen. We'll be releasing our fifth album as a duo in 2022 and hope to resume touring soon.
I began teaching violin, viola, fiddle, and cello lessons as a young teen in 1996, and as reported by the New York Times, in 2009 I embraced online teaching as one of the early music teachers offering lessons to students worldwide via Skype, FaceTime, and Zoom. I have since enjoyed troubleshooting challenges and inspiring dedicated students in dozens of countries and on every continent except Antarctica.
Since 2010 I've also been a contributing writer for Strings magazine, the creator of the educational Violin Geek Podcast and Violin Geek Blog, and to date, have published three online courses in effort to help violinists and violists address common technical challenges, such as vibrato, bowing, and left hand topics like shifting ad intonation, in ways which use our natural biomechanics to our advantage.
When I'm not playing or teaching music, I enjoy hiking to the tops of mountains and observing the creatures I come across in their natural environment, learning languages and exploring foreign cultures, savoring tea and conversation with friends, making tacos and experiencing ethnic flavors, and researching how the body and mind work, and could work more effectively and efficiently.
Please enjoy my site, and be in touch if you have a question or a topic you'd like me to address in my blog or podcast, would like to book me for a concert, event, or recording session, are interested in violin, viola, fiddle, or cello lessons, or would just like to say hello!
Musically,
Laurel
Recent Violin Geek Blog posts
- Female Composers in the Spotlight - an interview with Dr. Cora Cooper
- "Counting Down the Hours" - finding freedom and joy with Classical violinist and fiddler Maura Shawn Scanlin
- Learn to Love Your Metronome
- Adult Students: Harness the learning potential of a child
- Student Question: Should left handed students learn to play violin the opposite way?
- Improve your violin, viola, or cello sound, without practicing
- Key Signatures and the Circle of Fifths for String Players
- Tips for purchasing a playable violin, viola, or cello in 2021
Latest Video
Laurel ThomsenViolin, Viola, Vocals
Performance, Instruction, Recording
Based in Santa Cruz, California
"After the Fire" - released January 21, 2022!
We began recording this album in late July 2020, under California’s Covid–19 stay-at-home order, in Dan’s Bonny Doon home studio, The Shed. We were wrapping up by mid-August, but then a heatwave and extremely unusual lightning storm sparked a fast-moving forest fire. Completed after our evacuation to the safe haven of a friend’s home, After the Fire marks the end of an era and a fresh start; Dan’s little studio burned the morning after he’d rescued the rough tracks, studio equipment, and a range of instruments we play, yet rarely have the space to bring with us on the road. Highlighting them on this album helped us feel the joy of performing again and to know that despite the setbacks of the past year, our music will thrive in new ways.
Each song portrays a facet of the journey from setback to reclaimed hope - finding faith in the possibility of LOVE in “Make Me Come Alive,” HOME in “Beale Street,” COMMUNITY in “Together Again” and “Money Shouldn’t Talk That Strong,” and one’s own STRENGTH and FORTITUDE in “If A Wave” and “Hey, It’ll Be OK.”
Each song portrays a facet of the journey from setback to reclaimed hope - finding faith in the possibility of LOVE in “Make Me Come Alive,” HOME in “Beale Street,” COMMUNITY in “Together Again” and “Money Shouldn’t Talk That Strong,” and one’s own STRENGTH and FORTITUDE in “If A Wave” and “Hey, It’ll Be OK.”