Music Education
Les Ray was a well spoken advocate for music education. As the founder of ASM Music Schools in Florida, he created a respected educational program that includes some 2,500 students each week. He had strong feelings about the importance of the process in learning to play a musical instrument. Mr....
Virginia Waring began her musical career as a concert pianist. In fact, it was while performing a duet piano performance on the Fred Waring Radio Program that she first met her future husband. Fred Waring had a remarkable music career that covered radio, television, recordings, and music publishing...
Roy Ernst discovered a way to involve an older generation in the great experience of music making. While teaching at Eastman’s School of Music, Roy designed a program for the 50-plus population who perhaps have not ever played an instrument or have not since childhood. The New Horizons band program...
Jim Coffin was instantly recognized at any given trade show or industry meeting as the energetic advocate for music and music making. Jim’s career as a music director and educator includes authoring several important method tools including the popular “Performing Percussionist.” The book has been...
Irv Kratka had the idea of creating recordings of music while leaving out an instrument, such as the piano. Piano students and enthusiasts could then play along with the band on the recording, providing the missing music. The success of his efforts resulted in the establishment of his company,...
Leonard Schmitt opened a small guitar shop to provide lessons in the St. Louis area back in 1932. At the time we wrote a method for teaching music called the Schmitt Music Training Approach. Over the years the method has been used to educate millions of students on how to make music. In 1973, he...
David Briggs is a great example that not everyone in the music products industry enters into it because of their passion for music. David’s passion is business, and he has developed one of the strongest retail chains in the UK, Dawson’s Music. Mr. Briggs noted, “Looking for ways to improve what we...
Larry Westland set out to give a few music students a chance to play. He worked long and hard to gain support to create the Music for Youth School Programs in the UK, which was established in 1971. During enrollment in the Fall 2005 program, the two millionth student got the chance to make music....
Morton Subotnick composed one of the earliest and most important works of electronic music. When his album “Silver Apples of the Moon” was released in the late 1960s, it represented an entirely new era of composition. Years before the recording, he hired inventor and engineer Don Buchla to create a...
Val Eddy was a legendary vibraphonist and composer who played a large part in the early acceptance of the vibraphone in classical music and popular recordings. With his trusty 1922 Leedy vibraphone, Val composed and arranged a number of important books for the instrument including the renowned “...