Mr. Timothy Keleher

For information on the Cherry Hill East Music Department, please follow the link below:

Cherry Hill East Music Department Website

Timothy Keleher was selected as a Conducting Fellow for the Juilliard Conductors Workshop for Music Educators, 2011. Under his leadership the Cherry Hill High School East Symphony made their New York City debut at Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center in December 2009 and then returned for two additional performances since. In 2017 Cherry Hill East Symphony Orchestra, performed in concert at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, returning there again in February 2020. June 2019 the Cherry Hill East Symphony Orchestra made their Carnegie Hall debut performing at the 2019 Viennese Masters Orchestra Festival.

Mr. Keleher is also director of the High School East Jazz Band and Jazz Standards Group. These ensembles have earned competitive awards in addition to performance invitations from local and national venues, community leaders and elected officials. The Pit Orchestra has received several nominations and awards from the Paper Mill Playhouse Rising Star Program. In addition, Mr. Keleher directs the Cherry Hill East Wind Ensemble and teaches Advanced Placement Music Theory. He is a published composer, a Cum Laude Society faculty member and received an Award for Excellence in Teaching from the New Jersey Symphony Master Teacher Collaborative.

​He has performed at Harrahs, the Tropicana, the Hilton, Showboat casinos and House of Blues in Atlantic City with headliners including the Four Tops, the Temptations, Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight, Diahann Carroll, Eddie Holman, Peter Cetera, comedians Bob Newhart, Don Rickles, and jazz piano legend Sam Dockery.

Mr. Keleher graduated magna cum laude from the University of the Arts (formerly Philadelphia College of Performing Arts). He was principal trumpet of the Philadelphia College of Performing Arts Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia College of Performing Arts Brass Quintet, and the Youth Orchestra of Greater Philadelphia. Formerly Principal Trumpet with the Shreveport Symphony Orchestra and Symphony Brass Quartet, he has also been Music Librarian and Administrator for the Opera Company of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Singers.

“I propose that the reading and understanding of music be taught to our children from the very beginning of their school life; that they learn to participate with enthusiasm in the study of music from kindergarten through high school.

“No child is tone deaf; every child has the natural ability and desire to assimilate musical ideas and comprehend their combinations into musical forms. Every child can be taught to read music as he or she is taught to read words; and there is no reason why both kinds of reading cannot be taught simultaneously.

“...Children must receive musical instruction as naturally as food, and with as much pleasure as they derive from a baseball game. And this must happen from the beginning of their school lives.”

Leonard Bernstein: House Subcommittee on Select Education in 1977.