Betty Butcher is well known to Northwest Arkansas audiences as a pianist, singer, actress, and music theater composer and director. She received her musical training at the University of Minnesota and, as a piano student of Alan Chow, at the University of Arkansas. Since 1980 she has served as music theater director at the Fayetteville New School (a private school devoted to the arts), and has performed with the Arts Center of the Ozarks, the Shepherd Singers of Northwest Arkansas, the University of Arkansas Drama Department, and the Fayetteville Schools. She is also a published author of children’s songs and plays, including “The Children Left Behind,” which was recently performed at the San Francisco Center Force Summit Conference.

CLAIRE DETELS

    Claire Detels is Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of Arkansas, having taught there from 1982-2008,  after receiving her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Washington in Seattle. In addition to being a published author in the areas of aesthetics and 19th-century opera, Dr. Detels has performed as accompanist and soloist on piano and harpsichord throughout the state and region, with such groups as the Early Music Consort of Kansas City, the Duo Courante (with flutist Leonard Garrison), the North Arkansas Symphony Orchestra.  She has also been active in state and national education matters, as board member of the Arkansas Music Education Association, the national Gender Research in Music Education group, and as co-Chair of the Aesthetics and Education committee of the American Society for Aesthetics.  

 

     Since retirement, Dr. Detels has been concentrating on the piano, teaching at the Suzuki School of Music and performing at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, both in Fayetteville.  Studying piano since childhood, Detels's teachers have included Alan and Alvin Chow, Max Lanner, Reah Sadowsky, Randolph Hokanson, and Neal O’Doan; she has also studied harpsichord with Margaret Gries and Larry Palmer, and organ with Carole Terry.  Most recently she has received certificates from the Suzuki Institute of St. Louis, working under Karen Bartmann and Joan Kryzicki.   

 

     JAZZ ACTIVITIES  

Detels  currently studies jazz with Claudia Burson and performs as a jazz singer/pianist at local parties.  Call 872-1411 if you have an event for which you need background entertainment; full-size portable keyboard will travel.