AAMHL 2020 Mini-conference

Captioning sponsored by: Stenoknight CART Services

The Association of Adult Musicians with Hearing Loss is pleased to present an afternoon of webinars featuring topics of interest to musicians who use hearing devices. This year the fall mini-conference will take place on Sunday, October 25 from 1-5 pm Eastern Time. The agenda is as follows:

1:00-2:00 pm - Talking with your audiologists about configuring hearing aids for music performance and recording music (Charles Mokotoff and Rick Ledbetter)

2:00-2:45 pm Talking with your audiologists about configuring cochlear implants for music making (Dr. Brad Ingrao, Blue O'Connell and Wendy Cheng)

2:45 - 3:00 pm BREAK

3:00-4:00 pm Emoji’s, Marco-Polo and Pet Sharing Recitals, Oh My! Teaching Music Online can be productive and fun (Penny Lazarus)

4:00-5:00 pm Apps for Music Collaboration during a Pandemic (Peter Franklin)

Bios of our presenters:

Classical guitarist Charles Mokotoff received bachelors and masters degrees in guitar performance from Syracuse University and Ithaca College, respectively. He is also a long-time hearing aid user, and has spent a great deal of time working toward getting hearing aids to sound good for guitar performance.

Bassist Rick Ledbetter has been performing and composing music for over 50 years. He has lived with profound hearing loss since 1989 and has been programming his own hearing aids for the last decade.

Audiologist and sax player Brad Ingrao, Au.D, has been in clinical practice since 1992 in a variety of settings including academic, private practice, educational audiology, the VA and the hearing aid industry. He specializes in severe to profound hearing loss, including cochlear implants, musicians with hearing loss, and hearing assistive technologies.

Wendy Cheng grew up using a hearing aid in her left ear before losing the remainder of her hearing in 1996. She underwent cochlear implant surgery later that year and is now a bilateral cochlear implant user. In addition to serving as founder and president for AAMHL, she is an enthusiastic viola student and also enjoys ringing handbells.

Renee Blue O'Connell is a Certified Music Practitioner, singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. She plays fingerstyle guitar, Native American Flute, mountain dulcimer and percussion. Pre-Covid, she played percussion in a community band and is also trying handbells this fall.

Penny Lazarus, a Nationally Certified Teacher of Music (NCTM,) maintains a 45-student piano studio in Newburyport, MA. With degrees in piano performance, psychology, art history, and education, Penny is known for her creativity in teaching, silent movie music projects and collaborations with music studios around theworld. She often writes for The PIano Magazine and presents frequently at NCKP (National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy and MTNA (Music Teachers National Association). Her article titled “ Becoming Weavers: Piano students and their commissioned arrangements of music by under-represented women composers.” will be published by The Piano Magazine in December, 2020. When the coronavirus pandemic began in March, Penny moved her entire studio online and has been successfully teaching this way since. She is delighted to share her tips and strategies for effective communication online.

Peter Franklin received his undergraduate degrees in music education and cello performance from the University of Maryland in 2019. He has worked with various apps for collaborating in music making and looks forward to sharing his experiences with us.

Please note: There is no registration fee but we do ask that you register. As always, donations are gratefully accepted and information on donations can be found on the Association's web site. Registration will close at 10 am Eastern/New York time on Sunday, October 25.