The Simply Violin Team

CEO
Sheila Graves

Sheila started playing violin/fiddle in at the age of 8 and holds a degree in viola performance from Northwestern University.  She has taught at Augustana College and the University of Sioux Falls, in addition to maintaining a private teaching studio.  She has been a member of the Heidelberg (Germany) Chamber Orchestra, Sioux City Symphony, and the South Dakota Symphony.  Sheila entered her first fiddle contest in 1975.  She is a past 1st place winner of the National Old time Country & Bluegrass Music Festival in LeMars, Iowa.  In addition, she has placed in numerous fiddle contests and talent shows in Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, Missouri and Minnesota, including the Iowa State Fair and the Minnesota State Fair.  She has been arranging fiddle tunes since 1987.  She is a member of the Minnesota State Fiddlers Association and Minnesota Old Time Fiddlers Association.  Sheila has a background in violin repair and owned her own shop G&G Violins in Sioux City, Iowa.  Sheila has also worked for Kenneth Stein Violins in Chicago, Sioux Falls Music and Claire Givens Violins.  Currently she works at House of Note in Minneapolis, specializing in selling and appraising instruments and bows in the violin family.  She is a member of the Violin Society of America.  She has been a guest lecturer for the Suzuki Association of the Americas national conventions.  Sheila would like to dedicate her arrangements to the memory of her Mother, Marilyn Graves, and beloved teacher John Grossman who was a master at teaching, arranging music and making all styles of music fun!

Series Author and Producer
Lisa Berman, M.M.

Lisa Berman holds a Masters Degree in Violin Performance from the Yale School of Music and a Bachelor of Arts degree in music history and theory from Yale University. Born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Lisa began violin lessons at age four at MacPhail Center for Music, where she studied with Mark Bjork and Mary West. She went on to study with Erick Friedman at Yale School of Music. Lisa has been teaching private violin lessons for over a decade to students of all ages and levels in New Haven, CT, Pittsburgh, and now the Twin Cities area. Lisa is a past first prize winner in the Schubert Club Solo Competition and has been a guest soloist with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and at Tanglewood.

Lisa is the producer and an author of the Simply Violin Series of instructional books for violin, available on Amazon.com, on this site, and in music stores across the country.

Series Art Director
Dan Freiberg

As an advertising creative professional, Dan Freiberg worked many years at prominent ad agencies in Chicago, Milwaukee and Minneapolis. Since starting Freiberg Advertising, he has provided advertising art direction, copy writing, graphic design and marketing services for a variety of clients, including industrial, technological and retail. Whether in print, TV or Internet, Dan Freiberg believes that advertising must do more than just be there; it must work for the client.

Series Artist
Susan Giannantonio

web: www.artandstrings.com
e-mail: susangiannantonio@comcast.net

Born in Bradford, Pennsylvania and educated in voice, piano and violin in Princeton, NJ and Philadelphia, Susan developed an appreciation for watercolor when first inspired by visits to the Andrew Wyeth collection of the Brandywine Museum along with other Philadelphia area museums and galleries. There, in 1983 she began private study in watercolor.

Moving to Houston in the mid 1980s, she began formal studies of drawing, oil painting and composition at the Glassell School of Art. She eventually became employed by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, first in the Publications Department and, later, the office of director Peter Marzio.

Through the Watercolor Art Society-Houston (WAS-H), Susan has enjoyed many workshops, studying with some of the country’s finest watercolor instructors. Establishing her own studio in 1996, she continues to investigate watercolor’s wonderful transparency, brilliant color and versatility. She is now a WAS-H instructor of mixed watermedia techniques.

Susan has served as president of WAS-H, and most recently as volunteer development director. As a result of her hard working team, WAS-H is enjoying the first building in the US known to have been constructed for the specific purposes of teaching and exhibiting watercolor.

A mother of two grown sons, Susan also offers private instruction in piano, violin and cello. She and her husband Bruce Winquist divide their time between Houston and Chautauqua Lake in western New York.