ARTWORK MUSIC STUDIO

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Amelia Thornton Sears, M.M, B.M. is a violin and viola instructor, freelance performer, and recording artist.  She enjoys a vibrant career as a multi-genre musician, specializing in classical, folk-fiddle, jazz, and rock violin/viola.  Amelia founded Artwork Music Studio in Missoula in 2015 and is proud to teach alongside her husband, Adam Sears. An active member of the western Montana arts community, Amelia performs with String Orchestra of the Rockies, Glacier Symphony and Festival Amadeus, has taught multiple summers at Camp Festival Amadeus and has served as an adjudicator for the Missoula County Public Schools' District and State Music Festival. During summertime she and her musical partner Jessica Catron travel around the state performing music for beautiful weddings and events with their ensemble The Receptionists Music. Amelia also serves her music community and Montana enthusiasts as a licensed REALTOR with Glacier Sotheby's International Realty.

Amelia values being a lifelong learner! The Artwork Music Studio students have inspired her so much that she is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Music Psychology in Education, Performance and Wellbeing at the University of Sheffield, UK. She holds a Bachelor of Music with elective studies in business from University of Puget Sound, and a Masters in Classical Violin Performance from Ohio University. In her undergraduate years, Amelia studied abroad with IES and took lessons in Irish fiddling and completed a marketing internship at the Royal Academy of Art in London, so she is loving her continued connection to the UK! Amelia also has a deep abiding love for Norway and her artistic friends who live there. In 2018, she was awarded the loan of a Norwegian Hardanger fiddle by the Hardanger Fiddle Association of America and learned about its tradition and performance. This past summer, Amelia and Adam traveled to Norway for their honeymoon and enjoyed seeing a piano recital at the home of the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg!

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Working with artistic teens has been a priority for much of Amelia's life. Prior to founding Artwork Music Studio, she spent the summer of 2014 working as a Camp Counselor for the San Francisco Ballet School, and in 2014 and 2015 for Center Stage Strings Music Camp, now based at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor MI. From 2015 to 2016 she worked as the Workshop Manager for Crown of the Continent Guitar Festival in Bigfork MT, managed Front-of-House for a venue of 1000+ audience members, orchestrated the 2016 workshop classes and managed events that showcased the Festival Fellowship and Scholarship students. Amelia and her electric violin shared the stage with Grammy artist Dweezil Zappa, Kirk Covington, Adam Nitti, Tim Miller, and Kurt Morgan and she worked directly with Grammy award-winning artists Jim Messina, Lee Ritenour, and other guitar greats.

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In their non-musical time, Amelia and Adam like to garden, work on house projects, visit family at Thunder Road Farm, do silk paintings, and go foraging for edible mushrooms like chanterelles. Their dog Bowie prefers frisbee to all other forms of entertainment. 

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