Greater Johnstown School of Music

THE INSTRUCTORS

Director: Marty Faiers

Greater Johnstown School of Music Director Marty Faiers began playing violin when she was thirteen years old. She was selected to play with the All State Orchestra in grades 9, 10 and 11. She played with the University of Arkansas Symphony in 10th and 11th grade. Graduating a year early from high school, she played with the University of Arkansas Symphony and studied privately under two University of Arkansas faculty. Around that time, Marty also began playing folk music.

A contest winner on fiddle and placing in contests on guitar and banjo, Marty began teaching lessons in January of 1976. Since that time, she has added mandolin, cello, viola, dulcimer, and ukulele to her repertoire. Among her students, there have been a dozen or more participating in the Johnstown Youth Symphony Orchestra and several that have gone on to play professionally. She plays fiddle and mandolin with Dead Irish Blues.

Paul Kuzmiak

Paul has over 30 years of teaching experience and specializes in wind instruments (clarinet, flute, oboe, and saxophone). Paul got his BA at IUP and has a Masters of Music in clarinet performance from the Peabody Conservatory (John's Hopkins Branch). He plays with the Johnstown Reed Band and as been the organist and choir director at Zion Lutheran Church for thirty years.

Jessica Hann
A native of Pennsylvania, Jessica Elizabeth Hann, soprano, graduated from Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey, where she received a Master of Music in Vocal Performance and Pedagogy with distinction, and holds both a Bachelor of Science in Music Education and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Vocal Performance from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Under the guidance of Dr. Christopher Arneson, Dr. Kathy Kessler-Price, and Ms. Margaret Cusack, Ms. Hann received world-class instruction during her graduate studies in the verse of Vocal Pedagogy and has been putting it into practice in her own teaching in the private voice studio. While at Westminster, she participated in the Symphonic Choir with whom she sang Mahler’s The Resurrection Symphony at Carnegie Hall with Sir Simon Rattle and the Berliner Philharmoniker, Brahms' Ein deutsches Requiem at Verizon Hall with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and The Philadelphia Orchestra, and in Andrea Bocelli’s “Concert Under the Stars” in Central Park with Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic. As a member of the Westminster Williamson Voices, under the direction of Dr. James Jordan, she sang in the American premiere of Paul Mealor's choral masterwork Crucifixus. A student of internationally acclaimed soprano, Nova Thomas, Ms. Hann has studied as a young artist at the Le Chiavi di Bel Canto program in Houston, Texas, and she sang and studied as a member of the choral ensemble-in-residence for the inaugural Westminster Choral Institute at Oxford University. Recently, Ms. Hann sang the role of Donna Anna in Mozart's Don Giovanni at the Crescendo Summer Institute in Sárospatak, Hungary. Presently, Ms. Hann is the Middle School and High School Choir Director with the Windber Area School District in Windber, Pennsylvania, and is teaching private voice lessons.