McKenna Lee

McKenna Lee is a lover of variety, pursuing Masters degrees in both Percussion Performance and Music Theory as well as a University Teaching Certificate at West Virginia University. She holds a Bachelor of Music in Percussion Performance from Bethel University (Mishawaka, IN) and is a member of the international Percussive Arts Society. Her teaching experience includes her Graduate Assistantship at WVU, private piano and percussion lessons, theory classes at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp (Muskegon, MI), and theory tutoring at Bethel University.

As a pianist, she has accompanied choirs, performed in jazz ensembles, played in pits for musicals, and led and served on worship teams at churches and camp retreat centers. She was also the student leader and pianist of Bethel University’s LEAD Team, a music ministry outreach team. Her piano instructors have included Alexander Djordjevic and Marcia Lehe. As a percussionist, she has been a performer with the Blue Lake Fine Arts bands, orchestras, and percussion ensembles, as well as a pit musician for Bethel University, the South Bend Civic Theatre, and 574 Theatre (South Bend, IN). Her percussion instructors have included Michael Folker, Reginald Klopfenstein, George Willis, Brian Wolfe, and Michael Vercelli.

McKenna actively performs with the WVU orchestra, wind symphony, percussion ensemble, and world music ensembles, as well as local groups. Since arriving in West Virginia, she has recorded percussion for Dr. David Taddie’s Ghost House, accompanied Professor Nina Assimakopoulos’s premiere of Skywoman, was the featured vibraphonist for the world premiere of Michael Kahle’s We Are the Stories We’ve Been Told, and has been invited on multiple occasions to perform with the WVU faculty chamber ensemble. In her spare time, McKenna and her musical husband Mike enjoy teaching other new instruments as well as running, hiking, canoeing, and camping.