Dr. Heather Beers

Heather Beers earned her Doctor of Music Education degree from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. As an associate instructor there, she taught string class techniques, introduction to fundamentals of music, and teaching music in the elementary classroom. She studied string pedagogy with Dr. Brenda Brenner and Mimi Zweig and orchestral rehearsal principles with Cliff Colnot.

Dr. Beers also received her Master of Music degree in double bass performance from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and her Bachelor of Music degree in double bass performance from Capital University.

She is currently on faculty at Midcoast Music Academy in Rockland, Maine. She previously taught ukulele and general music at URBAN Act Academy in Indianapolis. Before that, she was a violin instructor at the Fairview Strings Project in Bloomington, Indiana and the violin director at Attica Elementary School. She was the string area coordinator and applied double bass faculty at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio.

Heather has extensive experience as an orchestral double bassist, and has performed with the Springfield Symphony Orchestra, Westerville Symphony Orchestra, Lima Symphony Orchestra, Newark-Granville Symphony Orchestra, Central Ohio Symphony Orchestra, Mansfield Symphony Orchestra, Lubbock Symphony Orchestra, and the Woods Hole Cantata Consort. She has also played with world music ensemble Nova Madrugada and was a featured soloist at the 2010 Capital University NOW Festival performance of composer Stan Smith’s Nocturne No. 1, Op. 529.

Dr. Beers is a co-author on the article “String music education research: A content analysis of peer-reviewed journals from 1990-2021” in Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education. She was invited to present her paper on gender representation within double bass method books at the MayDay Group Colloquium 28 Conference at Arizona State University in June 2016. Her dissertation is “A historical analysis of 100 years of heterogeneous string method books.” Her principal teachers include Kurt Muroki, Bruce Bransby, Owen Lee, Jeff Turner, and Dr. Mark Morton.