James Farquhar

James Farquhar is currently a student of Daniel Veis. He just concluded pursuing a Master’s Degree in Cello Performance from Park University’s International Center for Music and is continuing for an additional graduate degree - Graduate Certificate in Performance. He is formerly a student of Kurt Baldwin of the Arianna String Quartet at the University of Missouri - St. Louis. Under Baldwin’s instruction, James attained 2019-20 UMSL Artist of the Year with the Rococo Variations by Tchaikovsky. In the Spring of 2022, he was also named Odyssey Chamber Music’s Performance Fellow, with a culminating solo recital, in collaboration with pianist Peter Miyamoto (University of Missouri’s professor for piano). During his time pursuing his undergraduate degree, James organized numerous community recitals around St. Louis and Kansas City.

​He has received invaluable instruction from the likes of the Arianna String Quartet, the Brooklyn Rider String Quartet, the Harlem String Quartet, the Jupiter String Quartet, the Rolston String Quartet, Dennis Parker, Scott Lee, Jackie Lee, Frank Huang, and Shmuel Ashkenazy, among numerous others. James has also participated in various chamber music festivals including the Arianna Chamber Music Festival, Madeline Island Chamber Music Festival, Heartland Chamber Music Festival (as a festival scholar from the 2017-2022 seasons), Stringwood Festival, and Chamber Music in the Mountains (Mt. Lemmon, Arizona).

​James is a Teaching Artist for Harmony Project KC, a nonprofit that provides year round music education for underserved students from the diverse Historic Northeast Community of Kansas City, Missouri. James also aspires to organize grant-funded outreach concerts for underserved elementary schools, hospitals and nursing home communities.

My most relevant education for this position is certsinly my experience with three non-profits that were designed with an El Sistema approach. In my Undergraduate degree, I was an intern for Suzuki Harmony St. Louis, which was invaluable in helping me to understand how the nonprofit world works as well as gaining a lot of experience teaching underserved students. After returning home to Kansas City due to the rise of the Pandemic, I taught for another nonprofit designed to help the underserved gain access to music - Heartland Chamber Music’s String Sprouts program. This was hugely informative, in that I discovered I have a huge passion for nonprofit work, and it should be my life’s passion. I currently am a Teavhing Artist for Harmony Project KC, a program that also has similar goals - helping students in one of the most poverty-stricken parts of Kansas City get to college through music education in an El Sistema framework. It is my goal to be able to bring my years of experience to your organization (I began teaching in the nonprofit world in 2017).