JoAnne A. Krause has demonstrated a life-long passion for music and music education. As a long-time music education advocate in the Greater Milwaukee area, her volunteer work has focused on stressing the importance of music education as critical to keeping music performance alive.

 

Krause earned her Bachelor of Music Education from UW-Madison in 1961. A private piano teacher for 20 years, she also was a public school music teacher for four years and a church youth music director for nine years. As a vocalist, she has been a member of the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus for 17 years, and has also sung with the Bel Canto Chorus and the Florentine Opera Chorus. Krause and her husband, Donald, have three children and six grandchildren.

 

For more than 20 years, Krause has been a key supporter of numerous musical organizations in the Greater Milwaukee area, as well as state-wide and nationally. She has been widely active on the boards and committees of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra. As a board member for the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts in Brookfield, Krause was involved in the Center’s creation and recently returned to lead its Education Committee.

 

She has also served as president of the Association of Wisconsin Symphony Orchestras, the American Symphony Orchestra League, and the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra League. Her involvement with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra League also includes chairing their Kinderkonzerts and Young Artists’ Auditions, as well as being an active Docent for 15 years.

 

Krause currently serves as President of the Piano Arts Board of Directors, and on the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra’s Chairman’s Council and the UW-Madison School of Music’s Board of Visitors.

 

 

Emily Holt Crocker is nationally recognized as a leading expert in children's choirs. In 1989, after a 15-year teaching career in her native Texas, she moved to Milwaukee and joined the music publishing industry. She is currently Vice-President of Choral Publications for Hal Leonard Corporation, the world's largest publishing house of music.

 

In 1994 Crocker founded Milwaukee Children's Choir, envisioning a choir that would serve Milwaukee youth through quality music education as well as please Milwaukee audiences through artistic excellence. Now in its 15th season, Milwaukee Children’s Choir has grown under her guidance and leadership from a 35-member choir of novices to an organization divided into five levels with hundreds of members. Milwaukee Children’s Choir now serves grades 1-12, rehearses at 12 sites throughout the Greater Milwaukee area, and performs continuously throughout the school year. As its Founder and Artistic Director, Crocker also directs the choir’s Chamber Cantorei.

 

Crocker is a frequent guest conductor and clinician at children's choir festivals throughout the United States. She has led children's choir festivals at Carnegie Hall in 1999, 2001 and 2005. Locally, she has conducted the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and the Milwaukee Chamber Orchestra in performances with Milwaukee Children's Choir. In 2002, Civic Music Association awarded her the Certificate of Excellence in Youth Music Instruction.

 

As a composer, Crocker's works have been performed around the world. The recipient of several ASCAP awards, she is well known for her work in developing choral instructional materials, and is an author of Experiencing Choral Music, a choral textbook series for grades 6- 12 published by McGraw-Hill/Glencoe. Crocker also developed “Essential Musicianship”, a curriculum used throughout the world to teach vocal technique, music theory, and sight singing.