Chapter of the Year

CONGRATULATIONS!!!
Sunn Valley Chapter
2025 Chapter of the Year

About the Sunn Valley Chapter

The Sunn-Valley chapter is small, with only six members, but has disproportionately large impact on the musical community in the mid-Yakima Valley. All of our members are active performing musicians in the community. All of our members – half of whom are MTNA certified – have held an elected officer position. Our members include teachers whose students have won national awards, teachers who have sent many students on to college as music majors with scholarships, have mentored and launched pedagogy students into the teaching profession, and have published and sold original compositions and arrangements. Between the six of us, we can teach eight different instruments. There are three choral directors, an orchestra conductor, and a professional duet team that performs multiple times a year. A third of our number have earned master’s degrees in music, and an additional member has been accepted into the master’s program for Piano Pedagogy as a graduate student and teaching assistant, starting at CWU Ellensburg this fall.

Chapter programs include the Ribbon Festival and Ensemble Recital, which generally have between 60 and 80 students participating, often from over 80% of our studios. Our members’ pedagogical activities benefit our local community; students from our studios can be found accompanying their schoolmates at Solo & Ensemble, school bands, orchestras and choirs, community theater, playing for church, weddings, and competing in events around the state. One member recently judged a scholarship competition that handed out more than $7000 in awards. Performances featuring our teachers and students are frequently broadcast on MidValley TV, channel 192, and are the station’s website’s most downloaded programs.

In our rural, low-income area the need for musicians is great, and our local music teachers are stepping into the gap and not only making their significant music skills available to our community, but also training and mentoring the next generation of teachers and musicians.