Music Journalism & Publishing

With over 150 published articles to her credit, Susan is a busy music and performing arts journalist who writes on subjects ranging from copyright law to music education advocacy, vocal pedagogy, jazz performance, fundraising in the arts, recording reviews, musician profiles, and much more.

Her liner notes can be found on two Sony Classical releases: The Best of Gilbert and Sullivan and the soundtrack for director Mike Leigh’s Academy Award–winning film, Topsy-Turvy. Her articles have appeared in JazzTimes, Music Alive!, In Tune Monthly, Drum Corps International Yearbook, and a variety of other music-centered magazines, publications, and websites. She has interviewed a number of well-known figures in the performance sphere, including Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell, Arturo Sandoval, Sharon Isbin, Kevin Eubanks, Marin Alsop, Marc Shaiman, and Victor Wooten—to name just a very few—in addition to hundreds of leading educators, experts, and other professionals in the music industry.

From 2013 to 2019, Susan served as the Editor-in-Chief of Teaching Music Magazine for the National Association for Music Education (NAfME, formerly the MENC). She was also the Choral/Vocal Workshop columnist for over nine years, and a regular contributor to the publication for more than ten.

For over a decade, Susan was the Educational Director of Cherry Lane Music Publishing where her projects garnered a number of honors, including Paul Revere Awards from the Music Publishers Association of the United States and a DRUM! Magazine Drummie. In addition to playing through far more heavy metal guitar music than she ever dreamed possible and regularly performing SysEx dumps on her long-suffering Korg T1, she worked with drummer Ralph Johnson of Earth, Wind & Fire, Latin percussionist Poncho Sanchez, rock violinist Mark Wood of Transiberian Orchestra, keyboardist Jordan Rudess of Dream Theater, silent film composer Donald Sosin, and many others on their book, DVD, and audio recording projects. She also arranged and produced the American Standards book/CD series of play-along jazz standards, and spearheaded dozens of other projects for a diverse roster of artists including Warren Haynes, Metallica, Dave Matthews Band, Derek Trucks, Brian Setzer, Steely Dan, Bootsy Collins, and Johnny Winter, as well as the catalogues of the late Billy Strayhorn, Sammy Cahn, and John Denver.