New Course! Jazz Violin with Aaron Weinstein Now Available

Learn to play jazz violin like the masters, with practical tools for building solos on standard jazz songs, including melodic variation, harmonic entry points, and more!

By: Dan Gabel

August 30, 2025

We’re excited to announce a brand new course, Jazz Violin with Aaron Weinstein, designed for fiddlers and violinists who are just starting to play jazz and improvise solos. Aaron will teach you to play jazz violin like the masters, with lessons on building solos for standard jazz songs using improvisational devices you can use anywhere. He’ll help demystify jazz by providing practical tools for improvisation rather than relying on complex theory. Each lesson focuses on a specific tool and a related solo, helping you build a ready set of skills to use in all of your soloing. Aaron shows you how to use melodic variation, repeating motives, harmonic entry points, and more.

Jazz Violin with Aaron Weinstein includes backing tracks at slow and medium tempos (played by Peghead Nation swing and jazz guitar instructor Matt Munisteri), analysis of each solo, rephrasing suggestions, and more powerful tips. Aaron will be adding new lessons to the course every month.

Join us to learn to play jazz violin from the ground up with Aaron, who was named as one of Downbeat’s Rising Stars in the venerable publication’s 2019 critic’s poll.

Subscribe to Jazz Violin with Aaron Weinstein!

Called “a perfect musician” by jazz guitar legend, Bucky Pizzarelli, Aaron Weinstein “is rapidly establishing himself as one of his instrument’s rare jazz masters.” (Don Heckman, International Review of Music). Aaron is a respected violinist and mandolinist, widely regarded as one of the mandolin’s leading exponents in the jazz idiom, and author of the jazz mandolin book Mandolin Chord Melody System (Mel Bay Publications).

As a featured soloist, Aaron has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Birdland, Blue Note, as well as at jazz festivals in England, France, Iceland, Israel, and Switzerland. He has performed and recorded with an array of jazz icons including Les Paul, Bucky Pizzarelli, John Pizzarelli, Dick Hyman, Dave Frishberg, Jon Hendricks, and Annie Ross, as well as musicians as varied as New York Pops conductor Skitch Henderson and rock guitarist Jay Geils. He has written arrangements for vocalists such as Christine Ebersole, Linda Lavin, and the Manhattan Transfer’s Janis Siegel. Aaron is a recipient of both the New York City Bistro and New York City Nightlife Awards.

With the release of his Arbors Records debut, A Handful of Stars (heralded as “the rebirth of the hot jazz violin” by Nat Hentoff of the Wall Street Journal), Aaron became the youngest jazz musician to record for the prestigious label. He is a graduate of the Berklee College of Music, where he was awarded a full four-year talent-based scholarship. He was recently named as one of Downbeat’s Rising Stars in the venerable publication’s 2019 critic’s poll, and his recent album 3×3 features Aaron on violin, Peghead Nation instructor Matt Munisteri on guitar, and Tom Hubbard on bass, and is the perfect illustration of the beauty of simplicity.