Jochen Brusch is also a dedicated teacher. (Click hear to read about a recent performance together with his students.) His pupils have regularly won prizes at the German youth competition "Jugend musiziert", some of his former pupils have become succesful musicians themselves.
Yet, also less ambitous violin-fanciers are welcome among his students.

During a 10-day-period in the summer Jochen Brusch has set up his own workshop both for his own students and other young players. These participants gather at the concertviolinists Danish home on the beautiful Island of Mors, where they form a string-orchestra (the "Camerata Eben Ezer"). This group tours in Denmark and gives the youngsters the opportunity to perform in the orchestra and as soloists. In the summer 2001 the all-girl-group consisted of players from Denmark, Germany, Italy and Bulgaria. (Click here to read more about this event.)

Jochen Brusch has also composed music for young audiences. For his own students he has written a number of pieces and exercises, among these a collection of etudes based on works by J.S.Bach. 
Click here to see some of this music.

In a time with ever increasing "amusements" (though I would rather like to call them "distractions") in the multi-media world it seems even more remarkable when young people put their energy into such a demanding enterprise as learning to play a musical instrument.

In my teaching I try to share my own undiminished enthusiasm for the music and for the violin with my pupils.

I admire my students for their talent, intelligence and dillicence, which they use in order to learn such a difficult instrument as the violin. More than once during lessons or concerts I have been amazed by the way a pupil had mastered a certain technical hurdle or by the way they had shaped a musical line, (although I might well have discussed "improvements" with them immediately afterwards.)

To pass on the art of violin-playing to the next generation means more to me than just a pleasant occupation with young people and music. It also has to do with the continuation of a very old tradition: teachers have always given their knowledge to their pupils, who in turn have passed it on to the next generation etc. etc. In this way we can trace a path back to the very early times of violinplaying. In my case I have through my teachers found different lines down to the old Italian masters Arcangelo Corelli, Antonio Vivaldi and Giuseppe Tartini. Many other great names of the violin world can be found on these paths, among them Giovanni Battista Viotti, Rudolphe Kreutzer, Joseph Joachim, Carl Flesch and Ivan Galamian. Click here to have a closer look at the "violinistic genealogy".

Although not all of my pupils will once continue this great tradition, all of us are still members of this "family-tree of violinists". We all play an instrument that basically has remained the same in this ever faster changing world since it once appeared in its characteristic shape around the year 1550. Since then it has lost nothing of its magic.
Let us finish this small reflection with a short poem dedicated to the violin by Franz Grillparzer:

Four poor strings! – it seems like a joke –
For all marvels of Sound!
Yet Man has only one single heart
Which reaches all around.