Jan Baty’s love of music led her to major in violin performance, first at Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., then at the Yale School of Music, where she received the Master of Music in Applied Violin. Ms. Baty continued her studies at Julliard, where she was fortunate to study with Dorothy DeLay and Robert Mann of the Juilliard String Quartet. She continued to work with them over several summers at the Aspen Music Festival, where she was assistant concertmaster of the Aspen Festival Orchestra.

Ms. Baty spent three years with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, where her interest in playing string quartets became increasingly apparent. She soon auditioned for and was accepted into the Delos String Quartet, then one of the University of Delaware’s ensembles in residence. The quartet was able to build a career in the United States, and after winning an international competition in Colmar, France, in Europe as well. During this time, Ms. Baty was introduced to the Alexander Technique, which is an awareness training — at once practical and profound — that helps one cooperate with the body’s natural design for ease, grace and presence. The effect that the Alexander Technique had on Ms. Baty — her life, her playing and the quartet — was palpable.

Ms. Baty was fortunate to apprentice with Marjorie Barstow, who was in Alexander’s first training class in England and one of the first teachers to develop working with groups. For 15 years, Ms. Baty was on the faculty for the Alexander Alliance in Philadelphia, a teacher-training program for people who want to teach the technique. She has also served on the board of Alexander Technique International, the only international Alexander organization, with members in Europe, Australia, Japan and other countries. For many years she has organized and taught in a June Alexander intensive held near Charlottesville, Va. This event draws people who are new to the study as well as experienced teachers. The website iswww.theVillageGreen.net.

Ms. Baty offers an Alexander Technique class during Spring Semester through the Department of Music. The class is lively, exploratory and life-changing for many who take it. As the class studies experiential anatomy and how the body’s head, spine, arms and walking are organized for ease of movement, habits of tension are recognized and fall away again and again, allowing students to become more available to life. What they learn about their bodies’ ease of functioning then affects their expressivity, as they apply the principles of ease of movement to their instruments.​