School of Music

Darcy Drexler created and led the Master of Music in String Pedagogy degree program at UW-
Milwaukee for over two decades, where she taught violin/viola string pedagogy courses, in addition to applied violin and chamber music. In 1990, she was a founding violin faculty member of The String Academy of Wisconsin(SAW), a pre-college music school, and retired in Spring of 2022 after serving as its Director for 25 years. Ms. Drexler is an active musician and teacher, and has given masterclasses/string pedagogy workshops throughout the United States, Brazil, China and Spain. Her former students are winning national and international competitions, are members of symphony orchestras, and teaching throughout the United States.
Presently, besides serving on the IWU violin faculty (and preparatory department), she is an
adjunct lecturer of graduate and undergraduate violin/viola string pedagogy at DePaul University
in Chicago. Ms. Drexler is a member of Sinfonia da Camera and also enjoys performing in
chamber music and solo settings.

For many summers, Ms. Drexler directed the popular Milwaukee “Teaching the Violin to Children” workshop. She regularly presents at state and national string conferences and is currently serving on ASTA’s Emeritus Committee. Ms. Drexler has been a member of the Dallas Chamber Orchestra, Hawthorne Quartet, Illinois Symphony, and the Killington (VT) Music Festival, and has performed with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Milwaukee Ballet Orchestra, Dallas Ballet Orchestra, Wisconsin Philharmonic, Skylight Opera Theatre and the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra.

In addition to UWM and SAW, she has taught at the Indiana University Summer String Academy and Wisconsin Conservatory of Music. Interested early in teaching, she served as assistant to Catherine Tait at Meadowmount in upstate New York. Ms. Drexler holds Violin Performance degrees (with honors) from Southern Methodist University and the University of Illinois-Urbana.