Ann's Music Background

Ann is very grateful for the wonderful mentors and teachers she has had throughout her career in music, for the many colleagues in performance and education with whom she has shared, and for the great conductors and composers with whom she has been priviledged to work.

Through her teaching and coaching, Ann has mentored many students encouraging them to pursue and realize their dreams. She has taught them the skills, artistic sensitivity, business savvy and discipline that it takes to become a musician of today. It has been her great joy to watch the development and blossoming of her students.

Ann holds a Bachelor of Music degree in bass performance from the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music and a Master of Music degree in conducting from the University of Oregon. In 1992-93 Ann developed the original certificate and university transfer music programs for Kwantlen College in British Columbia, now Kwantlen Polytechnic University. Ann later developed a four-year university program proposal in the Business of Music for Kwantlen University College.
Ann has conducted and taught strings in the US and Canada at every level from elementary through graduate university courses. She has taught business of music, music appreciation, conducting repertoire for teachers of elementary through high school, aural musicianship, chamber music, bass and orchestra in universities. Ann has taught at Kwanten University College in British Columbia, and Western Illinois University, Illinois State University and Bradley University in Illinois. Ann developed and taught one of the first Business of Music courses in Canada. She co-developed and co-taught the first Psychophysiology of Music Performance course at Kwantlen.

As a performer, she has been a member of the Oklahoma City Symphony, the Rochester Philharmonic, the Hudson Valley Philharmonic and Chamber Players, and the Vancouver Symphony and performed with the San Antonio Symphony. In Illinois, Ann served as Principal Bass of the Champaign-Urbana Symphony, Co-Principal Bass of Opera Illinois and guest Principal of the Illinois Symphony. In Vancouver, she performed on the Masterpiece Chamber Music Series and was the founding member of the Kwantlen University College Faculty Chamber Music Series. She has worked collaboratively and enthusiastically to organize and bring wonderful musicians together to perform the music of the great composers.

Conductors with whom Ann has worked include: Walter Susskind, Igor Stravinsky, Robert Craft, Leopold Stokowski, Walter Hendl, James Levine, Pinchas Zukerman, Sergiu Commissiona, John Prichard, Kazuyoshi Akiyama, Neville Marriner and Aaron Copland. Composers with whom Ann has worked include: Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland, R. Murray Schafer, and Aram Katchaturian.

Ann served as a member of the Executive Board of the Vancouver Musicians' Association, Local 145 of the American Federation of Musicians, and as a member of the BC Status of the Artist Committee. She has been an arts and arts education advocate for her entire career with a special emphasis on music and music education.