Aaron Berofsky

Aaron Berofsky’s last three years of high school were spent studying with Elaine Richey, who helped shape him as a violinist and teacher. He is currently on the music faculty at University of Michigan and says of Richey, “She was one of those ladies who was important in so many ways.”

At age fourteen, Aaron started studying with Elaine. Berofsky actually lived in the Richey house while studying at North Carolina School of the Arts (NCSA). “I was just starting to put everything together; how to perform and feel like a musician. She was extremely helpful technically, and an incredible lady.”

He never attended the Saugatuck Chamber Music Festival as a student (he graduated in 1986 from NCSA) but as a teaching assistant to Elaine. He also played in the Chester Quartet, and in its second year of existence, they were asked to play at the Chamber Music Festival. They ended up playing there for six years in a row. “I miss the place,” Aaron says. He credits Elaine with inspiring him through her love of chamber music.

“She never gave up on investigating how to improve on her own playing,” says Berofsky. “There was nobody more devoted to teaching and students.” But Richey also taught her students how to teach. Aaron recalled one time when Elaine gave a written exam to the class, to be sure they intellectually understood what they were doing. He admires how she was in every aspect of playing consistent, but not rigid. “She taught us to be musical in a practical way.”

Now the more experience Berofsky has, the more he finds her noble and devoted. Another way she shaped his learning and teaching was the way she talked about music. “She always had a plan when she talked about shifting or vibrato, she didn’t go off on tangents without a purpose. She didn’t use extra flowery language. She was so dedicated to music and what she was doing.”

Since Aaron lived in the Richey house, he may have had a more personal view of her than some. He says of Elaine, “She was a great mother. They were good people.” And although she was so devoted to her music and students, she still “had a life.”

Now Berofsky is on the faculty at University of Michigan, and in the summers he goes for eight weeks to upstate New York for Meadowmount Summer Festival. The festival was started by Galamian, Elaine Richey’s famed teacher. The Chester Quartet was in residence at U of M for a period, but is currently dormant due to circumstances of logistics. Aaron is also interested in period instruments, on which he has recorded and performed. He is concertmaster of the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, and has a wife and two young boys: Charlie, seven years old, who plays piano and a tiny bit of cello, and Sebastian, four years old, who says he plays the cello but never has.