Traditional Arts Program for Students (TAPS)

Learn to play an Instrument: 
Students use their own instruments or may borrow them from Toe River Art’s musical library. They learn not only to play the guitar and fiddle, but to feel the music and understand the reasons to continue the traditions. 

Sam Maren
Sam grew up in a family where both parents played guitar and sang traditional ballads, folk songs and blues. Sam learned to play and sing at an early age. Sam’s interest and admiration for traditional Appalachian folk culture grew when at age twenty-three, he moved from his native New Jersey to Muddy Creek Mountain in rural West Virginia. There, he listened to the tales and stories of his old mountain neighbors who ranged in age from seventy to one hundred and three years old. Sam has lived with his family in the Southern Appalachian Mountains for the past thirty-seven years. He received a Bachelor of Arts from Bluefield State College in Bluefield West Virginia and a Master of Ats in Counseling from Marshal University.

Sam has taught folk music, storytelling, musical instrument and toy making workshops for children since 1996. He directed the music education program at the Greenbrier Episcopal School in Lewisburg and worked extensively with Carnegie Hall in Lewisburg, WV in their Creative Classrooms arts education program and Kid’s College. Sam has received extensive training in the Kennedy Center’s teach SmART Institute in the Arts for Educators program, which is intended to help teachers integrate art into their curriculum.

Suzie Solomon
Suzie Solomon has been a musician and performer all her life. Starting with piano lessons, then violin in elementary school, she asked for a guitar when she was 10 after seeing Your Cheatin’ Heart. Later more strings were added. Banjo, dulcimer, autoharp, mandolin. Besides giving instrument lessons through the years, she opened two music stores, put on bluegrass gospel festivals for over twenty years and performed for schools for over thirty years. She was privileged to be able to perform some of her own compositions. She continues to do these things and performs with her husband under the name South Wind which was changed from Miner Pickers. Her theme is Louis Armstrong’s quote, “What we play is life”.

Alena Garashi Applerose
Alena Garashi Applerose has been a k-12 arts educator for over 25 years and has had a personal art practice for as long as she can remember. Having always loved music, singing, and dancing, she was introduced to and fell in love with mountain music while earning her BS in Communication from Appalachian State University. Finding a passion for playing music and learning the ukulele mid-in life, she is thrilled to assist and help foster a love of old time, bluegrass, gospel, folk and the sounds of local Appalachian Mountain culture in the youth of our area.

Betsy Gurske
Betsy received her Bachelor of Arts in Music at State University of New York, New Paltz, majoring in clarinet performance and music therapy. After working as a teaching assistant at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in music appreciation, she worked for a few years leading music and activity programs in geriatrics while also teaching private piano and clarinet. She began what became a 27 year career as a Kindermusik educator in 1993.

Started at Queens University, it was the first early childhood music development program in the city of Charlotte. The program was repeatedly recognized as a maestro in outreach to special populations. In 2003, she and her husband John founded music.4.life, where it has been her deepest honor to have served thousands of Charlotte’s children and their families. She continues to teach adaptive, improvisational and traditional piano to students, with broad inclusion of other percussion instruments and singing.

John Gurske
John graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Madison with a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy. While there, he studied jazz history and performance with the legendary Richard Davis. After a fifteen-year career in the corporate world, John became Betsy’s part time business partner and joined her full time in 2003, bringing a large clientele of guitar students to the business.

As the school expanded through the years, John created his own Jam Band program, giving students the vital experience of playing with others in small group settings. Being a uniquely well-rounded musician, he gives students a solid foundation of musicianship yet adapts his teaching to various students’ tastes in different musical genres.
John has been active as a jazz guitarist and arranger for many years and can be seen performing with world class jazz musicians around Charlotte at breweries, clubs and private venues. His current work arranging includes a growing body of pop music reimagined into the jazz idiom, giving the general public a fun and easier way to relate to jazz.

Mitchell and Yancey County residents interested in participating can register here.

 A Terry McKinney student at Harris Middle School in Spruce Pine

Check out the Traditional Arts Program for Students (TAPS) students from Spring 2018 as they perform at a free concert in Black Mountain, “JAMming Across the Blue Ridge.”