Teaching Artists/Specialists

Amy Gage is a published children’s author and poet. For the past few years, she and her co–author have shared their poetry book with thousands of students by turning it into an interactive performance where the poems come to life through visual props, sound effects, instruments, and acting. Amy has a bachelor in communications from Stanford University and a master’s in education from Washington University.

The daughter of Irish immigrants, Eileen Gannon began Irish dancing and playing Irish music at the age of three. She plays instruments such as the piano, fiddle, tin–whistle, concertina, and harp. Growing up, she spent summers in Ireland, getting acquainted with the culture, and studying with Irish masters of music and dance. After graduating from St. Louis University with a bachelor of arts in music performance, she went to Ireland to obtain her master’s in ethnomusicology from the University of Limerick.

Jeanine York–Garesche earned a bachelor of music degree from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and a master of music degree from the St. Louis Conservatory of Music. The St. Louis Symphony, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, and The Webster University Symphony Orchestra are just a few of the ensembles in which Jeanine has played clarinet. In addition to participating as a staff and faculty member of the Tidewater Music Festival in Maryland, she attended the Johanneson International School of the Arts in Canada and served as clarinetist–in–residence for the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival in Blue Hill, Maine. Recently, Jeanine was chosen to perform as a recitalist during the 2001 Mu Phi Epsilon Professional Music Fraternity’s International Convention. She is currently a faculty member at the Symphony Music School at Webster, the University of Missouri–St Louis and Webster University.