Ms. Amber Finch - Director of Choirs
Mr. Michael Hilkert - Director of Bands - Mr. Hilkert is originally from Lancaster, PA. He has a long history of competitive marching band and drum & bugle corps experience. He has also played for several musicals around the Delmarva Peninsula and played in the Delmarva Big Band. He moved to Vermont last year with his wife and 2 dogs. In his spare time, Mr. Hilkert likes photography, disc golf and watching the Philadelphia Flyers during hockey season.
Mr. Ryan Garrett
Ms. Martha Higgins
Mr. Scott Paulson
Ms. Barbara Smith
Barbara Smith attended Bard College as a Liberace Scholar, where she received her Bachelor of Arts with a focus in Music Performance. While at Bard she worked with Joan Tower, Luis Garcia-Renart, flutist Patricia Spencer, saxophonists Erika Lindsay, Harvey Kaiser and Howard Johnson, clarinetist Larry Guy, and performed as a solo flutist with the American Symphony Orchestra. In 1999 she toured the United States, Russia, and Central Europe as a saxophonist with the American Russian Young Artists Orchestra under the direction of Leon Botstein. In 2000 she served as a guest panelist at the New York City Flute Convention. Barbara has performed in the area with The Vermont Jazz Ensemble, The East Bay Jazz Ensemble, The Party Crashers, Island Time Steel Drums, Bow Thayer and the Perfect Trainwreck, Spencer Lewis, and in various musical theater productions in Vermont and New Hampshire. She has also served as an adjudicator for district and state music festivals. She has served as a chamber music coach at the Green Mountain Youth Symphony Summer camp. Barbara has taught professionally since 2002. She is the co-founder of Vermont Independent School of the Arts in Sharon, VT (now known as the Seven Stars Arts Center), and helped form the Arts Bus project in Randolph, VT. Currently, she maintains a teaching studio out of her home in Bethel, is an adjunct music educator within the White River Valley Supervisory Union, based out of South Royalton, VT. During the Summer, she is the director and a teacher for the Summer Music for Kids program, a 501 (c ) 3 organization which provides free musical instruction/instrument rentals to students entering 2 nd grade through 8 th grade in the valley towns of Rochester, Stockbridge, Granville, Hancock, Pittsfield, and homeschooled students. Many of her students participate in district, state and regional music festivals, and have gone on to pursue music degrees at the collegiate level and are now performing and teaching professionally.