4700 Stonecroft BlvdMeet the Director
Ken Hall is director of the Guitar Studies Program at Westfield High School. Mr. Hall comes to Westfield from Arlington Public Schools where he taught instrumental music and directed the county’s Junior Honors Band. His last assignment in Arlington was as director of the guitar and jazz ensembles at Yorktown High School. In addition to his ten years in Arlington County, Mr. Hall taught for ten years in his native Massachusetts before relocating to Northern Virginia in 1994.
Mr. Hall received a Bachelor of Arts in Music from Westfield State College in Massachusetts in 1981 and a Masters in Music in Composition from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1986 where he was awarded a teaching assistantship. Mr. Hall studied classical guitar with Tim Olbrych and William Feasley as well as jazz guitar with Mick Goodrick, Barry Galbraith and Ted Dunbar.
Mr. Hall is an in-demand freelance guitarist playing engagements as diverse as the Ringling Bros. Barnum and Bailey Circus, the Richmond Symphony Orchestra, the Kennedy Center’s Opera House, and Blues Alley. Mr. Hall toured the former Soviet Union with a 16 piece big band in 1991 as a guest of the Soviet State Department and has performed with jazz greats Max Roach and Slide Hampton, country rocker Charlie Daniels, gospel great Andrae Crouch, comedienne Joan Rivers, and Italian crooner Al Martino to name a few.
While at Yorktown High School Mr. Hall’s Ensembles earned superior ratings at festival competition. In addition Mr. Hall was awarded the instrumental music director’s award of distinction at Fiesta-Val in Toronto in the spring of 2004 with Yorktown’s groups, and in Chicago in 2005 with Westfield’s guitar groups. In addition to his public school experience, Mr. Hall has taught guitar as adjunct faculty at the university level having taught at Westfield State College, Amherst College, and the University of Massachusetts.
Mr. Hall is currently on the adjunct faculty at Northern Virginia Community College. Many of Mr. Hall’s former students have gone on to become successful performing musicians and music educators. Mr. Hall’s guitar work can be found on numerous recordings.
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