Experience

Nancy Pontius, percussionist and pianist, received her Bachelor of Arts in Music from Wellesley College, and her Master in Education in Multicultural Education from Eastern University. She has completed her Orff-Schulwerk Certification, and has taught in many school districts in the Philadelphia metro area working with students from kindergarten to twelfth grade. Through her teaching, Nancy has also taught individual and small groups of students in both piano and percussion.

While living in Strasbourg, France in 2007, Nancy studied classical percussion at the Conservatoire de Strasbourg, taking percussion lessons in French with Emmanuel Séjourné (mallets), Stephan Fougeroux (snare), and Denis Riedinger (timpani). This experience reinvigorated her love of percussion, and propelled her through winning Wellesley’s concerto competition and completing her senior thesis on xylophone composer and performer, George Hamilton Green.

Nancy has also studied percussion with Craig McNutt in Boston, MA and with Trevor Detling and Charles Fischer, both of Austin, TX. Her first private teacher, piano instructor Mary Parse, gets all the credit for starting Nancy on her road to excellence in music. Nancy currently performs in the percussion sections of the Southampton Community Band, the Delaware Valley Wind Symphony, the Warminster Symphony Orchestra, and the Doylestown Wind Symphony.

Nancy believes that every child is musical. Regardless of her students’ background or prior musical knowledge, each student she has taught can sing, read music, and play an instrument. She has also designed her own music curriculum, successfully coordinated numerous school concerts, and served as the Choir Director at the elementary and middle school level.