Laura Reed
Concert Orchestra Conductor

Laura Reed joined the Gilbert Public Schools orchestra faculty in 2007. She currently is orchestra director at Campo Verde High School and taught at Mesquite Junior High School and Mesquite High School. In 2008-09, she founded the Mesquite Orchestra Student Mentoring Program (MOSMP), which the Arizona Department of Education named one of 13 “Promising Practices in Arts Education” programs in the state and awarded it a $22,500 grant. With a bachelor’s degree in music from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, she has played viola in the symphony orchestras of Youngstown, Warren, Middletown (Oh.), Westmoreland (Pa.), Jackson (Tenn.) and Paducah (Ky.). She maintains a private viola and violin studio in her home.

Before coming to Gilbert, Ms. Reed taught orchestra in Nashville and Franklin, Tennessee, and was conductor of the preparatory orchestra of the Murfreesboro Youth Symphony at Middle Tennessee State University. She earned a Master of Music in music education from West Virginia University between 1996 and 2001. During this time she founded and directed the North Central West Virginia Community Orchestra Association, made up of beginning after-school string classes, a youth orchestra, and an intergenerational community orchestra in Marion County, WV.

Before becoming a teacher, she was a communications manager for the St. Louis Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, and Music Teachers National Association. She served as editor of the American String Teacher, the journal of the American String Teachers Association, from 1994 – 2005.