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SUSAN MESSER
BRIEF BIO.
Susan Messer has been
involved professionally in music education and church music for over
twenty-five years as a public school teacher, a seminary professor, and a
church music minister. Dr. Messer has lived in Atlanta since 1997,
where she teaches middle school chorus and general music at Ridgeview
Charter School in the Fulton County public school district. At
Ridgeview, her choruses have consistently scored superior grades at the
district Large Group Performance Evaluations. In addition to fall,
winter, and spring concerts, each spring she directs and produces a
musical theater production which features 75-100 middle school students.
In March 2007, her chorus was the featured choir at the National Middle
School Festival in Carnegie Hall, sponsored by the Field Study Center
of New York. In March 2010, the Ridgeview chorus sang at the Pentagon
and in the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, DC. She was
named the 2002-2003 Fulton County Teacher of the Year in a school system
of 5500 teachers.
Dr. Messer has served churches in North Carolina, Louisiana, and
Georgia as a music minister. Presently, she is the minister of music at
Parkway Baptist Church, Duluth, Georgia, from October 2005 to the
present. She was assistant professor of church music education at the
New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary from 1988-1994. After leaving
New Orleans, Dr. Messer moved to Houston where she was the Apprentice
Choir director for the Houston Children’s Chorus. Also, in Houston, she
taught at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary satellite
campus.
Dr. Messer has taught at Ridgecrest and Glorieta Church Music
weeks, the Southern Baptist national assembly centers, and has conducted
workshops and served as a choral clinician in numerous states. For ten
years, she was a writer for the children’s choir curriculum for Lifeway
Christian Resources, the largest Christian publishing house in the
world. She received the Editor’s Choice award from the
Preschool/Children’s Music Department of Lifeway Christian Resources in
1998.
She earned her degrees at Meredith College in Raleigh, North
Carolina (B.M. in music education and applied piano), the New Orleans
Baptist Theological Seminary (M.C.M. in music education and piano
performance), and Louisiana State University (Ph.D. in music). Her
husband Jeff works for the Coca-Cola Company as a vice president in the
supply planning division. Their daughter Beth is a graduate of Florida
State University and Clemson University.
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