Laura Z Nerenberg
Adjunct Instructor: Violin
Laura Nerenberg is a Suzuki Violin, improvisation teacher and improvisation pedagogy coach for music teachers. She believes that all musicians can learn to improvise regardless of their previous experience. Laura has taught improvisation to students and teachers from 6 continents. She has also worked with students at uOttawa, Queen's University and Carleton University. She has been since 2000, director of Ottawa's Rideau Falls Violins.
Since graduate and undergraduate studies in violin performance at uOttawa and the Hartt School, Laura has studied complementary modalities like body-mapping and improvisation, which she integrates into her teaching.
An active chamber music performer, Laura is a founding member of Gatineau's Ensemble Prisme. She plays modern and Baroque violins in a duo with NACO harpsichordist, Thomas Annand, and founded the Triptych Piano Trio. She plays with several jazz ensembles like the Ottawa Jazz Orchestra and Courage 4. She was thrilled to be a featured performer, along with Ottawa's own silent improv duo SHHH!, at the 2025 Ottawa Improv Festival.
Complementing her commitment to Suzuki pedagogy, Laura teaches her students a wide variety of repertoire. She routinely includes works by living, Canadian, BIPOC, LGTBQ+ and women composers in her performances and her student concerts. Her students also regularly perform their own improvisations and compositions and explore other genres like fiddle, jazz and Blues.
In 2024 and 2025, Laura performed her inaugural autobiographical solo play, Jewish-ish, over a dozen times - often to sold-out audiences - from St. John's to Victoria to Whitehorse. She is currently working on several more plays. Laura is fascinated by issues of identity and artistic expression and fuses stories from her past with insights from the present. She interweaves her own musical performance throughout her plays. Laura was cast in Wayward Improvised Theatre's Wedding Party, which performed to sold-out audiences in 2025.