John Lindsey holds the highest rank conferred upon a faculty member in the State University of New York System, the SUNY Distinguished Service Professor (now Emeritus), bestowed upon him in 2009. At the time, he was one of only two Crane Faculty to have ever received a Distinguished Professor award. Professor Lindsey was on the violin faculty at the internationally known Crane School of Music, from 1981 to 2016, the year of his retirement. In 1993 he was awarded the SUNY Potsdam President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and, in 2003, the prestigious State University of New York Chancellor’s Award, also for Excellence in Teaching. In 1973, he was presented with the annual Mozart Award by Wilkes College (now King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, PA). Mr. Lindsey was recognized by the International Biographical Centre in Cambridge, England, with the 2003 International Musician of the Year Award and with the Mozart Award for Musical Achievement in the fall of 2008. In July, 2018, he was awarded the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award, named after Mr. Nelson, who founded the Marquis Who’s Who in 1898. In 1989 he was selected from over 200 applicants as the winner of the city of Dayton Ohio’s Annual Allegro Residency for the Arts.
Mr. Lindsey has achieved wide recognition as a concertmaster, soloist, chamber musician, and Professor of violin. A dedicated chamber musician, John has been first violinist of the Aurora String Quintet (NY), The Ruggieri Chamber Soloists (NH), The Lexington String Quartet (KY), the Quartetto da Camera, NUMA (New and Unusual Music Artists) contemporary Music Ensemble (NY), the Potsdam Piano Quartet, and the Concord Piano Trio. He has been the Concertmaster of the Orchestra of Northern New York for the past 35 years and the ELEVA Chamber Players (VT), a string orchestra without a conductor founded in 2006. In the past, he has served as the Concertmaster of the Lexington (KY) Philharmonic Orchestra, the Warren (OH) Chamber Orchestra, the Champlain Valley Symphony Orchestra (NY), the Castle Farm Festival Orchestra (MI), the Belleayre Summer Festival Orchestra (NY), and the Hanover (NH) Chamber Orchestra, a post he held for 18 years.
Mr. Lindsey was Co-Concertmaster and Soloist of the Dallas (TX) String Orchestra, which toured for 3 weeks in Israel and Jordan in 1972-73. The final concert was a royal command performance, presented at the Cultural Palace in Amman, Jordan, for His Majesty King Hussein. In 1979 he played chamber music for Prince Philip of England, Queen Elizabeth II’s husband, who was seated in the audience. John has been featured as violin soloist with orchestras on numerous occasions, having performed various concertos by Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart, and Haydn as well as the Beethoven, Sibelius, Bartok 2nd, and Lou Harrison (3 times) concertos. He also performed as the violin soloist in the Vaughan Williams Lark Ascending, the 2 Bartok Rhapsodies, and the Ravel Tzigane (3 times).
Mr. Lindsey has presented solo recitals in many locations, most notably in New York City’s Carnegie Recital Hall (twice) and The Bruno Walter Auditorium in Lincoln Center (five times) as well as at the French Library in Boston, Montreal (twice at the Christ Church Cathedral downtown), Dallas, in the Dame Myra Hess Series Chicago in the gorgeous foyer of the old Chicago Public Library, in Shenyang, China, and on a 5-city tour of Thailand in 2014. His full-time professional teaching career spanned 46 years. In his 1st professional position, Mr. Lindsey taught in the Dallas (TX) Public Schools for 1 ½ years before joining the music faculties at Baylor University in Texas (1973-76) and the University of Kentucky (1976-81) prior to his appointment at the Crane in the fall of 1981. For 3 years, Mr. Lindsey held the Conductor and Music Director position for the Danville-Centre College Orchestra (KY). Mr. Lindsey is listed in 17 national and international who’s who publications, among them, Who’s Who in American Music, the International Who’s Who of Intellectuals, and Who’s Who in International Music.
In the spirit of his teacher and gifted pedagogue, Paul Rolland, Professor Lindsey has presented numerous master classes in many locations. He was a Violin Instructor in the very first National String Project under Paul Rolland at the University of Illinois from 1968-1971. From 1971-1982 Mr. Lindsey taught at the Governor’s School of North Carolina, an 8-week summer program for gifted and talented high school students at Salem College in NC. Since 1994, he has been heavily involved in a variety of capacities involving the founding and special nurturing of the string program for the St. Lucia School of Music on the island of St. Lucia in the Caribbean. In June of 2011, Professor Lindsey gave a violin recital and a series of master classes at the Shenyang Conservatory in Shenyang, The People’s Republic of China. He served as a violinist and first violins coach on the faculty of the National Youth Orchestra’s one week Orchestra Festival in January of 2013 in Santa Marta, Colombia.
John Lindsey has shared his expertise and musical insights with gifted students from around the world while serving on the summer faculties of the renowned National Music Camp (now known as the Interlochen Arts Camp) in Michigan from 1983-86, the Adult Chamber Music Conference at Interlochen for 30 years (1983-2012), the Southeastern Music Camp (GA), the Ottawa Suzuki Institute (KS), the Ithaca Chamber Music Institute (NY) for 21 years (1987-2007), the Skaneateles Festival (NY), the 1988 Stage de Musique in Marcillat-en-Combraille (France), the Manitou Festival (MI) for 13 years (1989-2001), the Mozart Festival in Woodstock, Vermont, for 24 years, (1998-2021), the 2000 Canna International Music Festival in Canna, Italy, the Ameropa Festival in Prague in the Czech Republic for 5 years during the period of 2004-2011, the Illinois Summer Youth Chamber Music Festival for 2 years in Bloomington, IL, the 2008 Bulgaria International Festival and Tour, based in Gabrovo, Bulgaria, and the Vianden International Festival at Vianden Castle, Luxembourg, in 2014.
For 4 years, John and his wife were sole proprietors of a unique bed and breakfast in Potsdam, NY. The Siam Classic Inn and Spa. It was the first and only Thai style B & B in all of North America. They received the prestigious International Lux Media Group Award (from England) as the World’s Best Luxury Bed and Breakfast/Spa for the year 2015.
His CD album of violin music for early education purposes was released in August of 2020 and is available on Amazon and ITunes.
Please visit Professor Lindsey’s website at: www.violinjohnlindsey.com.