Alice Joy Lewis
Director of Ottawa Suzuki Strings
In 2008, Violinist, Alice Joy Lewis was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award – the highest recognition given by the Kansas Chapter of the American String Teachers’ Association. Mrs. Lewis was the recipient of the 2007 Kansas Governor’s Arts Award for Arts Educator. She founded the Ottawa Suzuki Strings in 1966. In addition to administrating the program, Mrs. Lewis teaches violin and viola lessons, ensembles, group classes, and directs performances. Students in the year round program come to Ottawa from seventeen different communities. Under Mrs. Lewis’ direction, the Ottawa Suzuki Strings have recorded three CD’s, and toured in England, Ireland, Puerto Rico, Australia, and the United States, including a performance at the United Nations. In 1991, Ottawa Suzuki Strings musicians were named Kansas Ambassadors by Kansas Governor Joan Finney.
Alice Joy Lewis has dedicated her life to teaching and is recipient of the Excellence in Teaching Award presented by the Suzuki Association of the Americas (SAA) in 1996. In North America, her teaching and lecturing activities have taken her to numerous locations in Canada and across the United States from Alaska to Hawaii and coast to coast. Mrs. Lewis is a registered Teacher Trainer for the Suzuki Association of the Americas, having taught close to 600 five-day Teacher Development courses. Well over 1,000 teachers have studied Suzuki pedagogy with her. Mrs. Lewis has taught at Suzuki World Conventions in Dublin, Ireland; Matsumoto, Japan; and Adelaide, Australia. Additionally, Alice Joy Lewis has served on the SAA Board of Directors and on the SAA Teacher Development and Institute Committees.
She was the featured keynote speaker at the Association’s Seventh National Conference, and at the Twelfth National Conference in May, 2006. The 2006 keynote address launched SAA’s ongoing Suzuki Heritage Project. Mrs. Lewis studied with Shinichi Suzuki in Matsumoto, Japan in 1974 and 1979 and her personal experiences with Dr. Suzuki, now preserved by SAA on DVD, will be a major contribution to the Heritage Project.
More than 30,000 children have participated in the Absolutely Ottawa! summer events, founded and directed by Mrs. Lewis. The Ottawa Suzuki Institute, which was founded in 1974, is the second oldest Suzuki Institute in the nation. SOUND ENCOUNTERS, an advanced string program featuring artist level master classes, was added in 1993 and in 1995 a collegiate division was added to SOUND ENCOUNTERS.
Mrs. Lewis evidences an ongoing commitment to bringing the best faculty from across the nation and internationally to Ottawa, Kansas annually for these events. Recitals presented by this world-class faculty are open to the public free of charge as are outstanding student recitals and concerts as well. Student participants and teacher trainees come from across the nation to benefit from the learning experiences offered.
Students from both the summer programs and Mrs. Lewis’ Ottawa Suzuki Strings studio have won prestigious awards and scholarships for further study, have been selected for solo performances with orchestras, and have developed successful careers in music.
A Kansas native, Mrs. Lewis holds both music education and violin performance degrees from the University of Kansas where she studied with Raymond Cerf. She has been affiliated with Ottawa University since 1965 in various capacities – theory instructor, violin teacher, and concertmaster of the College-Community orchestra. In addition to having been selected recipient of the Governor’s Arts Educator Award in 2007, Mrs. Lewis was recognized by the Ottawa Community Arts Council with a distinguished service award and by the Ottawa Area Chamber of Commerce with the Russell Crites Award for significant service to the community
Mrs. Lewis’ commitment to excellence and to the loving nurture of each person has resulted in the Ottawa Suzuki Strings being featured on a national broadcast of the Jim Lehrer News Hour in 2000 and to Mrs. Lewis and her family being featured as the cover story in the Spring 1995 American Suzuki Journal. Her life’s work is a testament to the hard work, vision, and determination of all those who make access to the arts an important part of life in Kansas.