Molly Wilkens-Reed

About Molly

Molly Wilkens-Reed is Collegiate Assistant Professor of Viola and director of the Virginia Tech String Project, a robust community string education and teacher training program at Virginia Tech. As faculty at Interlochen Summer Arts Camp, she spends her summers in beautiful northern Michigan teaching violin and viola. Past teaching engagements have included violin and viola faculty positions at the Peabody Preparatory, the Baltimore School for the Arts, the Bryn Mawr Music School, PRIZM Music Camp and International Chamber Music Festival, and the Memphis Suzuki Summer Institute. Her string music education presentations, performances, articles, and lectures have been featured at the American Viola Society Festival, the Virginia, Texas, and Tennessee Music Educators Conferences, the American String Teachers Association National Conference, the American Suzuki and American Viola Society Journals, and various university campuses across the country. Recent premiers include To Saint Augustine, for soprano, mixed ensemble, and fixed media by Bobby Ge, Grief by Juhi Bansal, and Jennifer Bernard Merkowitz’s Emerson’s Hands for viola and piano.

She is a member of the Epsilon Omicron Chapter of the Pi Kappa Lambda Society, the College Music Society, the National Association for Music Education, the American Suzuki Association, the American String Teachers Association, and the American Viola Society. As an adjudicator for local and national string competitions, she encourages young learners with thoughtful feedback and practical advice.

Wilkens-Reed's students have gone on to be award-winning music educators school orchestra programs, successful private studio teachers, professional chamber music ensemble players, arts administrators, and college music scholarship winners across the USA. She is trained in the Suzuki Violin Method through Book 8, studying with teacher trainers Marilyn O’Boyle, Kirsten Marshall, and Judy Bossuat-Gallic. Molly performs with a 2009 Stanley Kiernoziak viola and bow by David Samuels. She resides in Virginia with her husband and three sons.​​