The summer after
receiving her degree, Jeanie opened her first music studio
in Florida, where she taught private lessons in piano, flute,
and guitar, and started a VIP String program of her own. While
in Florida, she began to copyright her compositions, a set
of modal Christmas carols. She also toured Europe with Rollins
College Chapel Choir of Winter Park. She returned to
Monmouth in 1987, taught orchestra classes for Western's Community
School of the Arts, began work on her first publication (the
VIP Color Book, a transition note-speller), and assisted Dr.
Lyon in presenting his first VIP String Teacher Certification
Workshop.
In 1990, Jeanie moved to Taiwan, initiating
VIP Strings International, complete with performing tours,
teacher training, etc. That program is still going strong,
under the direction of Stacy Lyon-Yu. While living abroad,
Jeanie published 72 songs for children, and arranged other
classical and folk songs for performance by beginning string
students, with special attention to lower strings, because
of her son Jonathan's interest in playing bass.
After 3 years in the Orient, Jeanie relocated
to Utah, to rejuvenate VIP Strings in the intermountain area. She
organized various workshops, summer camps in the Tetons, and
directed numerous performances, as a traveling orchestra teacher
in Utah Valley elementary schools. In 1997, she came
home to Oregon and began rebuilding VIP Strings in Polk County,
providing full-spectrum performance venues for her students,
from blue-grass jam sessions with Old Time Fiddlers to blue-ribbon
floats in July 4th parades, from rollicking |
down-home
Polk County Fairs to formal Christmas concerts under the magnificent
dome within the State Capitol Rotunda.
After 13 single years, Jeanie
married acclaimed author and psychologist, John F. Taylor,
Ph.D., on August 9, 2002. Their duo, 'Fresh Air and Ivory',
featuring John at the piano with Jeanie on flute, can be found
at weddings, local receptions, and of course, churches, throughout
the Willamette Valley. Now happier than ever, Jeanie
will probably teach forevermore right here at her home studio
in Monmouth, in between her husband's frequent speaking engagements
across the country and around the world.
Jeanie has dearly loved each one of her hundreds
of students throughout her teaching career (especially those
who happen to be her own grandchildren living nearby)! Some
of Jeanie's former students have gone on to record their own
work, to participate in symphony orchestras and other performing
groups of varying levels, even solo performance, and also to
become music teachers. The opportunities seem to be limitless,
for students with such early encouragement, whether they aspire
to chair a symphony and perform solo concertos (as Karen Ostrom
has done in Tacoma), or wish merely to brighten the day for
residents of a local retirement center, or perhaps even to
make music all alone at home, simply for the purely personal
joy of it. Jeanie often says that music is 'the language
of Heaven'. Her belief in the positive creative power
within each child (age 5 or 55!) fuels her dedication to her
chosen profession of teaching music. |
