Irma Reeder

Albuquerque, New Mexico – Morning and Afternoon Classes
 
Irma Reeder was born in El Paso, but grew up in Germany where her father was stationed in the Army.  Her family provided a strong early music influence, coming from generations of Ozark mountain musicians, including several fiddle makers.  Singing melody and harmony with her sisters long before grade school, her mother taught her to play an open-G guitar using a pencil as a noter before her hand could reach around a guitar neck.  She taught her first guitar student when she was 10, and has been teaching steadily since age 15.
 
Irma has been directing vocal and instrumental ensembles since a teen, and has taught music privately, and in school and church settings.  She studied vocal performance for over 3 decades, as well as conducting, and various instruments.  She has been a soloist with symphony and theater groups, the Michael Iatauro Jazz Quartet, and performed with chorales, opera and light opera companies, the Celebration Chorale, Opera Theater Southwest and Albuquerque Civic Light Opera.
 
Irma came to the dulcimer in 2005, and is the 2009 Colorado State, 2011 Texas State, and 2016 Southern Regional (Ozark Folk Center, Mountain View, Arkansas) Mountain Dulcimer Champion and placed top 5 in the national mountain dulcimer contest in Winfield, KS in 2018.  Her arrangement and performance of ‘Shady Grove’ was a finalist in the 2018 New Mexico Music Awards.
 
Irma is a workshop teacher and past Board member of the Albuquerque Folk Festival, and has taught at the Red River (Red River, NM), Colorado State (Fort Collins, CO) and Lone Star State (Glen Rose, TX) Dulcimer Festivals and the Winter Festival of Acoustic Music (Irving, TX). She co-founded the New Mexico Dulcimer Festival where she is Association President, Festival Director, and an instructor/performer.
 
Her TAB, recordings, and articles have been published by Dulcimer Player News.  For more than 35 years, Irma was a church music administrator and choir director. She performs solo and with her husband, Scott, dba Music for All Seasons. She teaches voice, guitar, Celtic harp and mountain dulcimer privately, and harp and mountain dulcimer through University of New Mexico Continuing Education.  She also plays piano, keyboard, banjo, mandolin, bowed psaltery, bodhrán (Irish frame drum), tongue drum, and marimbula (a giant thumb piano bass).  Irma loves teaching, and welcomes the opportunity to work with students of all backgrounds and skill levels to help them attain their musical goals.