Welcome to the Cobb Symphony Orchestra (CSO)

Orchestra → Meet the Orchestra → Eleanor Bennett

Mrs. Eleanor Bennett has been playing the violin since she was ten years old, beginning in a school music program in the Fulton County School system. A year later she began to study privately with Senta Mueller Hutcheson. While studying with Mrs. Hutcheson she won a full scholarship to the Brevard Music Camp, became a student trainee with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and was a talent finalist in the Miss Atlanta Beauty Pageant.

Mrs. Bennett went on to Georgia State College to study music and violin performance with Homer Holloway. While studying with Mr. Holloway she won a full scholarship to study violin at the Congress of Strings at Michigan State University for two summers in a row. While there she studied with Raphael Druian, Concert Master of the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, During her time with Mr. Holloway, she also won the opportunity to perform the first movement of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with the Atlanta Community Orchestra. Mrs. Bennett became a professional member of the Atlanta Symphony during her senior year of college and took some private lessons from Robert Harrison, former Concert Master of the Atlanta Symphony and Professor of violin at the University of Georgia.

Two years later, Mrs. Bennett relocated to San Francisco, California where she enrolled in the San Francisco State College Music Education program. While there she had the opportunity to study chamber music performance with the first chair string players from the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. Upon returning to Atlanta, Mrs. Bennett studied privately with William Steck, Concert Master of the Atlanta symphony. She was awarded the position of Concert Mistress of the Atlanta Chamber Orchestra and performed professionally throughout Atlanta. Later she performed with the Chattanooga Symphony as Principal Second Violin.

Mrs. Bennett’s continued interest in music education took her to several Suzuki Workshops where she learned techniques for teaching the violin using the Suzuki method. She also had the opportunity to study violin with Terry Durbin, a well-known Suzuki Violin teacher and soloist.

Most recently Mrs. Bennett had the opportunity to study violin with Monte Belknap, who had been a student of the famous Dorothy Delay at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and now is Professor of Violin at Brigham Young University. Last summer, she attended the Starling-Delay Symposium on Violin studies at the Juilliard School of Music.