About Kailey Ford

Kailey Ford is a composer-violist-teacher who is based in Snellville, GA. At the age of 9 she was drawn to the violin because of its versatility, stretching from classical and baroque tones to vibrant sounds of blues and jazz. In the 11^th grade she claimed the viola as her primary instrument, drawn to its obscurity and dark tones. She actively teaches on both instruments today.

Kailey has performed on stages with Wynton Marsalis and Judy Collins, under conductors such as Joann Falletta, Yue Bao, Damon Gupton, Ken Lam, Keith Lockhart, and David Greilsammer, and at the University of Georgia, she was assistant principal of the viola section.

She recently graduated from the University of Georgia (magna cum laude) with Bachelors of Music in both Composition and Performance, studying under composers Emily Koh and Tom Hiel and violist Maggie Snyder.

Kailey is all about developing new ways to teach traditional concepts of string playing. Kailey is very passionate about welcoming diverse interpretations and approaches to learning string technique and music. As a young string player, she often experienced discouragement from not interpreting music lessons (or any school lessons) as uniformly or even as quickly as other students. For that reason, she understands when some things are hard to understand, and she loves to dedicate herself to making hard-to-understand things more understandable.

She enjoys finding parallels between music and math, music and history, music and emotional wellness, music and life.