Hear Tom introduce himself and play a bit.
Tom Druckenmiller
Teaches at Meadowood: Alternate Saturdays
Tom is a wonderful old-time banjo and guitar teacher who has played music all his life. His deep musical background strongly influences his teaching. Tom can teach basic music reading and theory as part of his instruction and offers those elements to students who want them. However, his personal preference for traditional acoustic music—most often taught by demonstration and by ear—means he especially enjoys teaching in that style. Tom loves working with students who want to play for fun. He has studied with banjoists Gerry Milnes, Craig Johnson, and Dwight Diller, and with guitarists Phil Jameson, Roy Bookbinder, and Norman and Nancy Blake.
Teaching beginning through advanced students, Tom emphasizes careful listening to music of the past. He teaches at the Augusta Heritage Center at Davis & Elkins College in Elkins, West Virginia, and has produced six CDs with his family band: The Road Home, ’Til the Clouds Roll By, Harvest Time, Morning Star, Bound to Change, and Back Home. The Druckenmiller family has shared the stage with Beausoleil, Byron Berline, Bill Hicks, Jones & Leva, Brad Leftwich, and Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer.
Tom has produced and hosted a radio program featuring old-time music for more than twenty years. His show, In the Tradition, has been a charter program on WDIY-FM (88.1 FM) in Allentown/Bethlehem. He has also been a reviewer for Sing Out! Magazine, a writer for the Martin Guitar Company’s The Sounding Board, and a member of the steering committee for “Old Time Music on the Radio,” an organization that disbanded after achieving its goal of increasing air time for old-time music.
Tom continues to host In the Tradition on WDIY and now produces and hosts The Sing Out! Radio Magazine, which is syndicated nationally and available on iTunes, Stitcher, Podomatic, and on the Sing Out! website.
We are very excited to have Tom teaching at Meadowood.
Students visit Meadowood Music from communities throughout Berks County and the Lehigh Valley — including Reading, Allentown, Bethlehem, Kutztown, Fleetwood, and Boyertown — for private music lessons. We also sometimes have students who travel to us from places as distant as Lancaster, Harrisburg, the Philadelphia area, and occasionally from New Jersey, New York City, Baltimore, and Washington DC.