Music Education
Don Hilsberg fell in love with the harp when he was in the third grade and was taken to the symphony. His parents could not afford a harp, so young Don began taking organ and piano lessons. Midway into college at the University of Denver, Don was given the chance to play the harp and it was all he...
Greg Dell’Era brought his music background together with his technical resources to form a company in his native France in 2011 called Weezic. His goal was to expand the content of music publishers who had their music on printed paper to a digital format in order to combine the music with other...
Cosmo Watts is a multi-talented musician and songwriter who played an important role in the music products industry as a sound designer, synthesizer programmer and music teacher. Growing up in a home surrounded by music, his father was close friends with big band vibraphonist Red Norvo. Cosmo began...
Christy Coobatis is a college music professor whose amazing musical journey includes playing professionally before he was a teenager, beta testing guitars for Leo Fender, and helping to create a guitar synthesizer for Allan Holdsworth! Christy’s latest and longest tenure as a teacher has been at...
Marlene Hutchinson has come up with several clever ways to encourage people to become music makers. With an emphasis on fun and ease, she had such success with her own guitar students that she wrote a number of method books all with the aim of empowering first-time musicians and inspiring those...
Dennis Alexander has sought to engage and inspire music makers at all levels throughout his long and successful career as a music educator. As a professor of music with a focus on pedagogy, Dennis began to notice the ways in which his students successfully learned to read and study music. In 1986,...
Mike Kamphuis is perfectly suited for his position as Vice President, Division of Education at Conn-Selmer in Elkhart, Indiana. His role allows him to work closely with educators and industry leaders with the mission to make music programs available to all students. Leaning on his own experiences,...
Jason Bartel opened Maple Leaf Strings in 2011, right across the street from his father’s business, Baroque Violin Shop, in Cincinnati, Ohio. The two companies helped each other, and often Jason would walk a customer's violin over to his dad for repairs. Jason’s father, Paul Bartel, opened a small...
Sharell Del Fiorentino remembers as a little girl pretending the back of her daddy’s car seat was a piano keyboard. As long as she can recall, she has always wanted to be a pianist. When she was ten her parents purchased a piano for her, although they could hardly afford the expense. As a result...
Leesa McBeth played flute since she was a child and remembers the day her sister, Sheryl Laukat, was given a saxophone which their parents purchased from Sears, where her father was employed. Music was all around them growing up and Leesa pursued her passion by teaching music. She taught for 30...