Biography

Jessica Platt holds undergraduate and master's degrees from Boston University and her doctorate is from Ball State University. Her formative years were influenced by John Kendall and the Suzuki Method, while Roman Totenberg helped form the artist she has become. Jessica has performed in orchestras across the United States and Europe. Locally, she has performed with the Bach Society, the Fox Theatre Orchestra, the Muny Opera, Union Avenue Opera, Winter Opera, Salem-Chamber Orchestra and the Gateway Orchestra. She has performed major concertos annually with local orchestras and she founded the Cardinal Quartet in 2004 and the Arch String Project in 2018.

Pedagogically, Jessica believes that every student is capable of learning to play a musical instrument well. The idea that music is a language and should be studied as such is a core ingredient to her teaching method. The enjoyment of such studies is what she works to attain for all of her students as well as herself. She has extensive training and teaching experience in the Suzuki method, under the tutelage of John Kendall and others. She has taught individual and group lessons at the Suzuki Institute of Boston, the String Project at the University of Texas in Austin, SIUE and the Kirkwood Academy of Music. She believes every student should study solos, chamber music, theory, history and how to connect all of these elements. Teaching the entire human being is her main goal. A number of her students have been in the St. Louis Youth Orchestra, the Preparatory Program-Webster University, the Missouri and Illinois All-State Orchestras, the National Youth Orchestra of the United States and as scholarship recipients in prominent university orchestras.
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Always open to give back where and when the needs arise, even if the need is outside that of playing and teaching music, Jessica is willing to help. She is also a life-long learner.