10:00am - Meet and greet with refreshments
10:30am - Presentation begins
AAPF presentations are free and open to the public. Please join us!
Let's get educated on piano competitions!
Our four experienced and distinguished panel members, Dr. Deborah Belcher, Dr. Sharyn Edwards, Polly Feitzinger, and Dr. Leonidas Lagrimas will answer questions submitted by teachers, students, and parents to help us fill in the gaps and understand the ins and outs of piano competitions.
Please submit questions before November 7th to jennajaffe@gmail.com
We will leave ample time for questions that come up as well.
Jenna is the moderator and presenter for this presentation.
Jenna Jaffe / Music Education Bio
Jenna Jaffe has been teaching music since 1992 when she graduated Cum Laude from the University of California at Santa Barbara with a degree in Music. She began teaching in a special music program where she traveled to public elementary schools. She also taught private voice classes at Westmont College in Montecito, CA. Jenna was also studying voice privately with Janice McVey at USC in Los Angeles. At this time she began teaching at her private home studio (while raising children), teaching piano, voice, music theory, music history, music composition, including other music subjects. She has been continuously running her private studio: MusicManifested/Conscious Creating for 34 years, including dance, drama, phonetic coaching, French I/II, Spanish I/II, and gender-affirming vocal/life coaching.
Jenna has lived in Asheville since 2004 where she was the K-4 music teacher at Evergreen Community Charter School until she had a death in the family which took her back to private teaching. Since then, she has taught at Asheville Montessori School, Girls Rock Asheville, Carolina Day School Horizons Program, homeschool group teaching, other programs, and currently Claxton after-school arts classes. She will be doing song camps for 6-8 year olds at the Asheville Music School this summer.
Jenna is a member of the Asheville Area Piano Forum, where she was on the board, and founded the student outreach program to help those who need keyboards/pianos for study. She is presently on the board of the Asheville Music School and helps with programming. Jenna specializes in teaching music to neurodivergent people of all ages.
In addition, Jenna has been a music director at numerous spiritual communities, is a singer/songwriter, and published poet. She has taught ESL at ABTech Community College for 9 years, she is a certified peer support specialist, a Reiki III practitioner, a performing artist (theater, dance), a visual artist, amateur gardener, and most proudly, a mother of three wonderful grown men, and a grandmother of Oscar (in Charleston), and Ellie, who attends the JCC Shalom program. Jenna lives in East Asheville (in hiking distance to the BRP) with 4 cats and lots of plants.
She is so excited to bring music to the JCC Shalom program and has already begun writing songs to bring to life with all the children.