String Instrument Lessons At Moore Music Company

Christen Blanton is a musician/educator currently residing in Greensboro, North Carolina. She hails from New York, and comes from a large family of musicians. Christen holds degrees in music education and viola performance from the State University of New York at Potsdam (BM) and The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (MM). She has studied viola with Dr. Peter Bucknell, Dr. Shelly Tramposh, and Dr. Scott Rawls. She has been a member of the Orchestra of Northern New York and the Fayetteville Symphony Orchestra. Christen maintains an active playing career in classical music, while still pursuing her personal interests in music history and ethnomusicology. While completing her Master’s degree at UNC-G, Christen had the great fortune to enroll as a founding member of the Old-Time Ensemble and meet Mark Dillon and Dan Clouse. After years of playing music together, they formed the Zinc Kings in the fall of 2010, and dedicated themselves to preserving the music of the North Carolina Piedmont. Since becoming a Zinc King, Christen has placed in several fiddle contests, including the Eastern Randolph Fiddler’s Convention and the Charlie Poole Festival.

A passionate music educator, Christen teaches classroom music, choir, and violin at St. Pius X Catholic School, and maintains a large studio of violin, viola, and fiddle students at Moore Music Company in Greensboro. She believes that traditional music has much to offer young musicians, and works tirelessly to incorporate folk and roots elements into the standard music curriculum. Christen is an active member of the National Association for Music Educators and the American String Teachers Association. She is engaged to the Zinc Kings’ bassist Ryan Mack, and the two enjoy camping, cooking, and traveling in their spare time. Christen is eternally indebted to Dr. Revell Carr of UNC-G for introducing her to the many pleasures of playing Old-Time music.

Catherine Box is a native of Texas where she began playing the viola in her school orchestra in 5th grade. She received her Bachelor of Music Education degree from Baylor University and her Master of Music Performance degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Catherine has studied viola with Dr. Kathryn Steely, Dr. Scott Rawls, and Erika Eckert. She has studied violin with Dr. Fabian Lopez.

Catherine currently lives in Greensboro where she enjoys performing and teaching students of all ages. She has been teaching violin and viola lessons for over 10 years. She has taught both young beginners and older students, having successfully prepared high school students for college auditions. She is currently a member of the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra and also frequently performs with the Winston-Salem Symphony as a substitute violist.

Ryan Mack is a bass player and music educator currently living in Greensboro, North Carolina. Ryan hails from Watertown, South Dakota. He attended Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota where he received his Bachelor of Music Education. While living in Fargo, Ryan performed with the Fargo-Moorhead Symphony as a section bass player. In 2005, Ryan attended the University of North Carolina at Greensboro where he received a Masters in String Bass Performance under the tutelage of Mr. Craig Brown. Ryan currently teaches middle school orchestra where he is able to spread his love of music. Ryan is the bass player with The Zinc Kings, an old-time and Piedmont blues band. He also has experience playing gypsy jazz and swing music and continues to expand his abilities with other styles of music.

Virginia Masius started playing bass in the suburbs of Chicago at age 10. She attended East Carolina University, and then finished her Bachelor's Degree in Music at the North Carolina School of the Arts in 1991. She is currently playing with Greensboro Symphony Orchestra, and Assistant Principal Bass in Salisbury Symphony Orchestra. Virginia also plays with Floydz Circle Band, a blues/rock band based out of Rockingham County, NC. She has been teaching in the Greensboro area for 15 years, and has been performing professionally throughout the state for 25 years.

Margaret Cording Petty divides her time between cello performance and musical composition, writing especially for cello and strings. She plays professionally with the Salisbury Symphony, regional orchestras, and for solo, chamber and theater venues. Her cello studies, begun as a child through school music, continued with Marijane Siegal (Chicago), Allen Harris (Rochester NY), and Leslies Parnas (Boston).  In addition to numerous recitals, she has performed concertos with orchestras (Bloch’s Schelomo, Haydn D Major and Boccherini B-flat concertos), and played in various festivals (Spoleto, Italy).  Earning a Master of Music in cello performance at Boston University, she taught strings and then music theory for the university as she pursued doctoral studies in music composition.

Before coming to Greensboro, she resided for thirty years near Chantilly, France, where, as a college teacher, she directed college and regional choirs, taught music theory and hymnology, and contributed scholarly articles in musicology to European publications. Continuing to perform and teach cello, she played in orchestras in Senlis and Paris.

Margaret earned a Ph.D. in musicology from the Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne.  Her undergraduate degree, in Music Education, is from Wheaton College, IL.

Lauren Shriver graduated from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in 2012 with a Bachelor of Music in Cello Performance, where she studied with Peter Stumpf. There she performed with the IU Philharmonic Orchestra and Terre Haute Symphony. Since moving to Greensboro in December 2012, she has become the Assistant Principal cellist in the Raleigh Symphony and performs often throughout the Piedmont area. She began teaching private students with the Renaissance Music Academy based out of Blacksburg, VA in February 2013 and maintains a private studio near Danville, VA. Lauren is originally from Ashland, VA, and was very involved with the Richmond Symphony through their youth orchestra program growing up. She works alongside her students, encouraging them as they develop their love for music and the cello, specifically.

Bethany Uhler is a cellist and music educator interested in bring classical music to non-traditional venues. Hospitals, grocery stores, retirement communities, correctional facilities, centers for high-risk children, and rehabilitation facilities are among the settings she most enjoys and on which she focuses the majority of her outreach.  Bethany's interest in playing for audiences unaccustomed to classical music and classical western instruments started while she was living in the Philippines for four years and playing everywhere from isolated mountain villages to low-income areas in Manila. While teaching cello, double bass, and music theory at a small college in Manila, she performed, taught, and recorded all over the Philippine islands, and in Hong Kong and Australia.  Bethany directs the string program at the Chatham Youth Development Center, where she teaches string instruments to incarcerated juveniles. She also teaches at Moore Music, and works at the University of North Carolina - Greensboro as a graduate assistant for Music History classes as well as being the String Department's chamber ensemble outreach coordinator. A member of the Triad-based piano trio SHU Strings, Bethany also plays in the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra, and is in the doctoral program at the University of North Carolina - Greensboro studying with Alexander Ezerman.

Violinist Naomi Bate Woods is passionate about finding new ways to interact with the community through music. She has performed in recital halls and on street corners, in churches, coffee shops, and elementary school classrooms. She has played in orchestras at the college and professional level, and has given both solo and chamber music recitals in Greensboro, NC, Waco, TX and Valparaiso, Chile. She often serves as a backup musician for her husband, singer-songwriter Tyler Len Woods.

Naomi began studying violin in the year 2000 and went on to achieve both a Bachelor's and Master's degree in Violin Performance. Her primary violin teachers have been Roslyn Willis in Greensboro, NC, Fabian Lopez at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro, and Bruce Berg at Baylor University in Waco, TX. She has been teaching privately since 2009 and is comfortable with students of all ages and skill level. She now teaches private lessons in Greensboro while freelancing and serving as worship pastor alongside her husband Tyler at Monticello United Church of Christ in Browns Summit.