-Beginners-

Olive Bopp has a career in music spanning more than five decades. She has a B. M. E and M. M. E. from MSU in Murray, Kentucky along with the completion of performance requirements for a M. M.

Olive was a cellist for 10 years with the Evansville (Indiana) Philharmonic Orchestra, while starting a strings program and teaching in the Owensboro, KY Public Schools. She served on the Kentucky Arts Council and during this time participated in meetings to bring about the founding of the Owensboro Symphony Orchestra.

A member of the Prydatkevitch String Quartet, Olive had the privilege of working with composer and violinist Roman Prydatkevitch. During these early years of her career she occasionally taught strings to college students at Brescia College (now Brescia University) and cello/bass at Kentucky Wesleyan College and served as principal cellist in the newly created (and still going strong) Owensboro Symphony Orchestra, which she helped start. She also sang second soprano in the fledgling Owensboro Chorale.

Olive was the Director of the New Orleans Symphony Community Music School, a Suzuki based program for children in New Orleans and also served as assistant conductor of the New Orleans Symphony Youth Orchestra, which rehearsed at Tulane University.

Austin Boncher, Supervisor of Music with the Appleton Area School District brought Olive to Wisconsin where she taught in the public schools until her retirement. Olive was briefly principal cellist with the Fox Valley Symphony and has performed many concerts with the Green Bay Symphony and the Lawrence Symphony Orchestras. Thanks to the encouragement of Carrie Gruselle, she took on the job of coach for beginning strings (although she prefers being called ‘teacher’) with the Lawrence University New Horizons Orchestra since almost its beginning.

She currently teaches violin, viola, cello, bass and piano in her home studio and continues working with new students at the newly independent New Horizons Orchestra.

“If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician.  I often think in music.  I live my daydreams in music.  I see my life in terms of music.”  (Albert Einstein)