Featured Clinicians

Our convention includes over 300 clinics by music educators from Texas and beyond. Each year, our TMEA Divisions can also include nationally recognized Featured Clinicians who present multiple clinics targeted to the members of the division. Learn more about these Featured Clinicians below and make plans to attend their clinics!

Orchestra Division

Kirt Mosier

Kirt Mosier is an internationally known and critically acclaimed composer and conductor. He is the conductor of the Lee’s Summit Symphony and has been the artistic director for the Kansas City Youth Symphony. Mosier has also served on the national board of Music for All.
He has conducted numerous performances with international orchestras at locations such as New York’s Carnegie Hall, Reykjavik Iceland’s Harpa Hall, Vienna’s Musikverein and MuTH Concert Halls, Salzburg’s Mozarteum, Singapore, Jakarta, South Korea, Thailand and Australia’s famed Sydney Opera House. Mosier has twice won national composition awards with his 1993 work entitled “Baltic Dance” and his 2004 composition entitled “American Reel”.

Mosier also taught orchestration for the University of Missouri Kansas City Conservatory and had a distinguished career as Director of Orchestras with the Raytown and Lee’s Summit School Districts in Missouri. Mosier was the founding teacher of the Digital Media Technology program at Summit Technology Academy which is housed by the Lee’s Summit R7 School District. Digital Media Technology students learn studio multitrack recording as well as video editing software and techniques. Mosier’s students at Summit Technology Academy have won national recognition and many are in the professional industry today.

Mosier continues to appear as a guest conductor throughout the world. He also writes annually for several publishers and fills commissions for many groups. In 2022, Kirt Mosier was inducted into the Raytown Quality Schools Alumni Hall of Fame.

Vocal Division

Sandra Babb

Sandra Babb is Associate Professor of Choral Music Education at Oregon State University, where she teaches choral methods, vocal pedagogy, and choral conducting lab. She also directs the Soprano-Alto choir, OSU Bella Voce, which recently performed for the 2021 National Conference of the American Choral Directors Association, as well as the Oregon State University Chorale, the Heart of the Valley Children’s Choir, made up of 5th-8th grade singers, and the Heart of the Valley Chamber Choir, for 9th-12th grade singers. Prior to teaching at OSU, Babb taught in New York at Queens College, CUNY, and in the public schools of central Florida. She also worked with the Gulf Coast Youth Choirs (Lynne Gackle, Founding and Artistic Director) as the conductor of the Gulf Coast Girl Choir for 10 years.

Known for her work in developing choral tone, Babb is an active conductor and clinician throughout the United States. She has conducted all state and honor choirs in Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah, and Virginia. She as co-authored articles for the International Journal of Research in Choral Singing, The Journal of Music Teacher Education, and the Choral Journal, and she is a contributing author for Composing in Choirs, GIA Publications, Teaching Music through Performance in Choir, Volume IV, GIA Publications, and Voices in Concert, Hal Leonard Corporation.

Babb received her BME, MME, and PhD in music education from Florida State University where she studied with Judy Bowers, Roy Delp, and André J. Thomas, and she is a National Center for Voice and Speech certified vocologist. She currently serves at the OR-ACDA and NW-ACDA Chair for Treble Choirs. She has previously served as the Society for Music Teacher Education Chair for Oregon, the Student Activities Chair for NW-ACDA and NY-ACDA, as well as the Co-Coordinator for National Honor Choirs of ACDA.

Babb enjoys living in the Pacific Northwest, singing with the Corvallis Repertory Singers, building partnerships with local K-12 schools, and directing the OSU Summer Choir Camp for high school singers.

Elementary Division

Michael Chandler

Michael Chandler is an Assistant Professor of Music and Coordinator of Music Education at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee (USA), where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in music education and supervises student teachers.

Chandler taught elementary general music in Texas public schools for 16 years, during which time his student groups performed as invited ensembles at the Texas Music Educators Association (TMEA) conference in 2013, 2007, and 2005. He was a collaborative pianist for the Children’s Chorus of Greater Dallas for 10 years and is the current founding conductor of the Clarksville Children’s Chorus.

He teaches all three levels of Orff Schulwerk basic and recorder during summers in AOSA-approved teacher education courses at the University of Memphis, Southern Methodist University, and in the San Francisco International Orff Course. His work has appeared in Southwestern Musician, Update: Applications of Research in Music Education, The Orff Echo, and Orff-Schulwerk International.

Sarah T. Tullock

Sarah T. Tullock is a music educator and composer living and working near Chattanooga, Tenn., where she teaches general music at Snow Hill Elementary School in the Hamilton County School District. Tullock holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sacred Music from Emory and Henry College, a Master’s Degree in Music Education from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and full Kodály certification from KIUTC. An active choral composer, Tullock has twice studied with Alice Parker as a Melodious Accord Fellow. Tullock is the 2022 recipient of the Organization of American Kodály Educators’ “Outstanding Emerging Educator” award.

During the summer months, Tullock serves as a choral conducting and pedagogy instructor for two Kodály Institutes – the Carolina Kodály Institute and the Kodály Institute at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Tullock’s choral works have been performed by elementary school choirs, middle and high school choirs, college choirs, and community choirs from all over the country.

College Division

Carlos R. Abril

Carlos R. Abril is Professor and Associate Dean for Research at the University of Miami Frost School of Music, where he teaches courses in philosophy, qualitative methods, and general music education. His research aims to identify barriers to studying music in schools, as well as to illuminate ways to make the study of music more accessible and relevant to children.

He has published his work in numerous research and professional journals, as well as in books. He co-edited the books General Music: Dimensions of Practice, Teaching General Music: Approaches, Issues, and Viewpoints, and Musical Experiences in Our Lives. Abril is the immediate past chair of the Society for Research in Music Education and has served on the Research Panel for the National Endowment for the Arts. He is a recipient of the Phillip Frost Award for Excellence in Teaching and Scholarship and a Provost Research Award.

Nicole R. Robinson

Before launching Cultural Connections by Design (CCBD) in September 2018, Nicole R. Robinson served as the Associate Vice-President for Equity and Diversity at the University of Utah. Over the course of her 25+ year academic career, Robinson served on the music education faculty at the University of Utah as the Beverley Taylor Sorenson Presidential Endowed Professor of Music Education, the University of Memphis, Syracuse University, and Virginia Commonwealth University.

Robinson is nationally acclaimed as an educator, scholar, speaker, and author. She has presented her research at national and international conferences and has published in several of the industry’s leading research journals. Dr. Robinson has co-authored the textbooks Teaching Elementary Music: Integrating Music with Other Academic Subjects and General Music K-12 (3rd Ed.). She has presented her research at regional, national, and international conferences and symposia and has published in various leading professional journals including the Journal of Research in Music Education, Music Educators Journal, General Music Today, Journal of National Association for the Education of Young Children and Action, Criticism, & Theory for Music Education.

Robinson founded CCBD with the primary aim of supporting organizations in establishing equity-centered processes and implementing best practices to shift the organizational culture towards a culture of belonging – a culture that accepts, values, and leverages the strengths among differences. Since the company’s inception four years ago, CCBD has worked with approximately 105 organizations and presented more than 990 professional development sessions, workshops, and consulting services to academic institutions, health care organizations, government agencies, non-profits, and corporations across the United States, Canada, and abroad.

Robinson holds B.M.E. and M.M. degrees in Music Education from North Carolina Central University, Durham, NC, and a Ph.D. from The Florida State University in Music Education. She started her career as an elementary and middle school music teacher in Durham Public Schools and Chapel-Hill Carrboro Schools in North Carolina.