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Dorothy DeLay, School of Music alumna and premiere violin teacher

Dorothy DeLay was a world renowned violin teacher for more than 50 years. On March 25 at age 84, she died in her home in Upper Nyack, New York, after a more than year long battle with cancer.

In 1937, DeLay received her undergraduate degree in music at Michigan State University, returning in 1991 to receive an honorary doctorate. She also received honorary doctorates from Oberlin College, Columbia University, Duquesne University, Brown University, and the University of Colorado. In addition, she earned an Artist Diploma from Juilliard Graduate School, and was a Fellow of the Royal College of Music in Great Britain.

DeLay has served on the faculties of Juilliard, Sarah Lawrence College, Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and Aspen and Meadowmount Schools of Music. She has presented master classes worldwide. More than just a teacher of violin, DeLay was also an active mentor, career advisor, confidant, concert fashion consultant, and even surrogate mother.

DeLay has trained worldwide chamber musicians, concertmasters of major orchestras, and prominent orchestra performers. Many of her students are among the most famous performers and teachers in the world, including Sarah Chang, Cho-Liang Lin, Robert McDuffie, Midori, Shlomo Mitz, Itzhak Perlman and Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg. She has also trained members of some of the world's greatest chamber groups, including the Juilliard, Cleveland, Tokyo, American, Takács, Mendelssohn, Vermeer, and the Ying String Quartets.

Among her numerous awards and honors were the Artist Teacher Award of the American String Teachers Association; the King Solomon Award of the America-Israel Foundation; the National Medal of Arts, presented by President Clinton at a White House ceremony; the Order of the Sacred Treasure (Japan); the National Music Council's American Eagle Award; and the Sanford Medal, Yale University's highest award for Distinguished Contributions to Music.

An array of publications, from The New York Times, to France's Le Monde de la Musique, and South Africa's Die Volksblad, have described her as the world's foremost teacher of the violin.

According to Professor Joel Smirnoff, former student and colleague of DeLay at Juilliard, and in residence at MSU for a number of years with the Juilliard String Quartet, "Dorothy Delay's contribution to the lives of her students were great musically, violinistically and personally. She was blessed with a great set of ears and the ability to analyze and articulate what she heard. Her teaching was based on a deep knowledge of the violin, its repertoire and personal psychology. Her great wish was that each of her students would become mature and effective men and women who would go as far as they wished on the violin - and in life. It was my great honor and pleasure to have had her as a teacher and then as a friend."