Elementary Band & Orchestra Programs

Ms. Davidson-Stanfill started playing the piano at age 4 and began playing the clarinet at age 14.  She was the odd child you always had to ask to stop practicing.  (“Stop practicing, go outside and play!”). It was at a 5th Grade “meet the instrument” assembly that she discovered the clarinet, and while it took a few years to get started on it, it was the instrument that most deeply resonated with her.  She wound up performing in all sorts of professional and semi-professional groups, including the Denver Municipal Band and the Jefferson Symphony.

She attended CU Boulder and then Arizona State University, finishing with a Bachelor of Music Education degree and both a Bachelor and Master of Music degree in Clarinet Performance.

Ms. Davidson started teaching Band and General Music in Mesa Public  Schools, way back in 1993.  When she moved back home to Colorado, she also taught in the Cherry Creek Schools, at Cherry Creek Academy, and then in Douglas County Schools, teaching mostly Band and Orchestra, but also Choir, Guitar, and more General Music.  She has an affinity for beginning instrumental music.  She never gets tired of helping a ‘brand new’ student figure out their instrument and how to play their first songs, like “Hot Cross Buns.”  For her, it’s the light-bulb moments her student has to get to that point that keep the easy tunes exciting.

In 2009, Ms. Davidson-Stanfill was asked by District leadership to start a fee-based before- and after-school Band and Orchestra program for elementary students in the Rock Canyon feeder area, where she had been teaching before the big budget cuts in that year, as interest was high in the community for continuing those classes.  In the following years,  her program was asked to expand to also serve additional feeder areas.

Ms. Davidson says learning to play an instrument is so good for our students, in so many ways.