Dr. Will Schmid Will Schmid holds a B.A. from Luther College and a Ph.D. from the Eastman School of Music. His public school teaching included general music, choral music and band, and he taught at Winona Sate University, the University of Kansas, and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Will is a past-president of MENC — The National Association for Music Education.

Schmid is a program author for Pearson’s 2002 and 2005 Silver Burdett Making Music series. He is the principal author of the world’s #1 selling Hal Leonard Guitar Method and over seventy other books/CDs/DVDs for drumming, guitar, banjo, strings, and choral. Dr. Schmid is also the principal author/editor of an 8-volume high school choral textbook, Something New to Sing About (Glencoe/G. Schirmer). He has given workshops throughout the United States and in Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico and Europe. After a two-year $ 140,000 national pilot project in twenty schools nationwide, Dr. Schmid launched the World Music Drumming curriculum (included in Drumming Units of Making Music grades 6-8) which brings the excitement of African and Latin drumming and singing to schools throughout the United States. Recent additions to the World Music Drumming publications include New Ensembles and Songs (Hal Leonard), the World Music Drumming Choral Series (Hal Leonard), More New Ensembles and Songs, and Peanut Butter Jam (spring, ‘09)

Dr. Schmid is the recipient of the 1996 Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Eastman School of Music. In 2002 he was named a Lowell Mason Fellow by MENC and given the Distinguished Service Award from the Music Industry Conference (MIC). In 2006, he was named the inaugural winner of the DeLucia Prize for Innovation in Music Education given by the Mockingbird Foundation.

During his presidency of MENC (1994-96), Dr. Schmid worked to reestablish the importance of active music making in schools and in America at large. MENC created new partnership initiatives in the areas of guitar, keyboards, strings, drumming, and singing as exemplified by the Get America Singing . . . Again! Campaign and the GAMA/NAMM/MENC-sponsored Teaching Guitar workshops.

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Larry Van Mersbergen www.larryvanmersbergen.com