Maria Anthony

Music Teacher

My name is Maria Anthony. I'm interested in world music in general, but I specialize in North American folk music (the usual singer/songwriter material, but also including the Maritimes and Cape Breton) and Celtic (from all Seven Nations) folk music, as well as vocal and instrumental (raga) music from India. I write songs, and encourage children to do the same, and to improvise.

I was the music teacher and program coordinator at the Montessori Children's school of Lawrence for just under twenty years. Before MCHL, I taught guitar lessons and did kids music classes at the Lawrence Arts Center, under Linda Reimond. I used to give private solo and group lessons on guitar, piano, recorder/flutes and rhythm instruments. Also on vocals, breath support, intonation and core strengthening exercises, including both traditional Italian and Indian solfeggi. I like to tailor my classes to the needs and inclinations of the students. My music lessons stress inclusivity and diversity, accountability, honesty, ecology and stewardship, international influences and a global consciousness, and a sense of connectedness and respect. Children have varying capabilities and and interests, and I like to nurture them in a way that is very fun but is constantly challenging. That all sounds rather serious, but if you ask the kids they'll probably say that I am very silly. I firmly believe that music helps to facilitate all learning.

Although I have a sponge of a head for songs, I didn't grow up with instruments, and playing them didn't come easily, but the efforts made me intuitively recognize similar struggles in others, and whether the issues are musically technical or have to do with emotions and confidence, I have a knack for being able to help. I am a great admirer of Rudolph Steiner and a firm believer and advocate of his teachings, especially the concepts of anthroposophy and eurhythmy, and I am honored and delighted to get to teach at a Waldorf school.

I know thousands of songs, and the main focus of my creative life has always been music, but my degree is in art. I have a BFA from KU in metalsmithing and jewelry design. I like to incorporate art into musical projects and vice versa. I'm all about multi-media. I worked at Goldmakers Jewelry in Lawrence for eighteen years. I also worked as a tour guide in the US and Canadian Maritimes for a few years in the late 1990's. Otherwise, I spent the past thirty years traveling, performing and touring, solo and with a variety of groups. I co-founded the River Valley Celtic Society in the late 1990's and we put on some festivals. I toured Kansas as part of the Kansas Arts Commission Touring roster. I played in the midwest, on the East Coast and in California, Nova Scotia, and in Scotland. In the early 2000's I was part of a small group sponsored by the US State Department to perform as Good Will Ambassadors in places where we were trying to make diplomatic inroads, including Macedonia (former Yugoslavia) and the wonderful country of Belarus. Several years agoI stopped gigging and I switched to mostly studio work. I write, record, and animate/film/edit and produce videos.

I live with my husband Monty south of Lawrence, where we have been engaged in prairie and woodland restoration for many years. We are in the process of buying the land that we live on (fingers crossed!) as part of a Conservation Easement through the Kansas Land Trust, meaning that the majority of it can never be developed. We are deeply committed to conservation of what's left of the wilderness here in the Eastern Glacial Hills of Kansas.