NJMEA Salutes Its 2020 Master Music Teachers

Sue Mark graduated Magna Cum Laude from West Chester University with a B.S. in Music Education. She was a double major on flute and voice, with a minor in piano. Along with holding Pennsylvania and New Jersey Teacher of Music Certifications, she also holds a New Jersey Elementary School Teacher certificate.

Sue is in her 33rd year of teaching and currently teaches instrumental music at Rosa International Middle School in Cherry Hill, NJ, where she has been for the past 21 years. Her job responsibilities include directing bands, jazz band and orchestras, as well as teaching small-group lessons to over 280 wind, string and percussion players. She is also a co-advisor and the layout designer of the school newspaper, The Raptor’s Roar.

She is an active member of the NJMEA where she plays a supporting role in several activities throughout the year including South Jersey Band, Region Jazz, South Jersey and All-State Junior High Orchestra. She is also the NJ All State Orchestra Auditions Chair. Last year, Sue guest conducted the Region III Flute Choir. In 2018, she was guest conductor of the All South Jersey Junior High School Orchestra. She has also guest conducted the New Hampshire MEA Middle School Southeast District Festival Orchestra, as well as the All South Jersey Junior High School Band and Elementary Honors Band. Sue serves as the co-coordinator of the NJMEA Summer Workshop. She also presents workshops to colleagues throughout the state. These workshops focus on technology and communicating with students through the vast resources available today, along with using technology on a limited budget.

Musically active outside of her regular teaching job as a woodwind player in local pit orchestras, Sue also is a keyboard player and vocalist in a pop/ rock cover band, Memories. She recently stepped back into her marching band shoes and took on an additional role as the assistant director/color guard instructor of the Cherry Hill HS West marching band.

In her spare time, she is the mother of two awesome young men - DJ (recently married) and Bryan (a college senior) - and wife to her husband, Jim, who teaches instrumental music at Cherry Hill High School West. She lives in Washington Township and loves to spend time with her family on their boats (tubing and cruising), at their lake site and dock, and attending sports activities such as ice hockey, football and baseball.

Sue has no intentions of slowing down any time soon. “My passion for teaching and instilling the love of music in my students is still as strong today as it was when I started. I can’t imagine doing anything else.”

Nicole Snodgrass has been the choral director at Cherokee High School in Marlton, New Jersey for the past twenty-one years and is in her twenty-fifth year of teaching vocal music. During her time at Cherokee High School, her choirs are perennially featured musical guests at The White House in Washington, D.C. and Carnegie Hall in Manhattan, have appeared live in concert with the rock band Foreigner at the Camden BB&T Pavilion, have performed for the stadium fans of the Harlem Globetrotters, the Philadelphia Phillies, the Philadelphia Phantoms, as well as guest appearances at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Grounds for Sculpture. Nicoles' choirs have toured England, Ireland, San Francisco, New York City, Boston, and Charleston, South Carolina, and recorded several albums of their tour presentations. Her Concert Choir was invited to perform at the 2019 Louisiana ACDA conference in New Orleans. Her 2009 Girls Traveling Choir won the B101 Christmas Idol Radio Contest and received a $7,500 piano from Cunningham Piano Company. Many of her students have gone on to make their living in the field of music.

She is honored to be the recipient of the 2020 NJMEA New Jersey Master Music Teacher Award as well as being selected as the 2020 Conductor of the New Jersey All-State Treble Chorus. Other recent accolades include Cherokee High School Teacher of the Year (2018), quarterfinalist for the Grammy Music Educator Award (2016 & 2017), conductor of the South Jersey Senior High Chorus (2015) and in 2014, she was chosen as one of Suburban Family Magazine’s “Outstanding Teachers.”

Using her own gifts in mentoring students and other teachers, she has hosted and collaborated with world-class musicians to offer her students master classes with Grammy Award winning singer Paul Phoenix, British a cappella vocal ensemble The King’s Singers, composers Ola Gjeilo and David Conte, and acclaimed choral directors Rollo Dilworth, Dr. Amanda Quist, Tom Shelton, Dr. Chris Thomas, and Gabriel Crouch. She commissioned British composer Michael Neaum to write a choral work which her choir premiered at Longwood Gardens as part of their 100th anniversary celebration.

Educated at West Chester University, she studied choral conducting with Grammy award winning conductor Donald Nally. She has also received extensive training at Westminster Choir College where she studied choral conducting with Joe Miller, vocal technique and rehearsal techniques with James Jordan, voice pedagogy with Kathy Price, and she recently earned her Level I Kodály Certification. Snodgrass has sung professionally for more than twenty-five years. She has appeared as a guest soloist with the Ocean City Pops Orchestra, Brandywine Valley Chorale, and has performed choral works with the Pennsylvania Ballet and Delaware Symphony Orchestra. She has been the soprano soloist at Historic Old Pine Street Church in Philadelphia since 1996.