Meet Patti Onorato, TBMS Early Childhood Music Coordinator

Patti Onorato earned her Bachelor of Music from the Manhattan School of Music. She has sung, acted and played various instruments in the U.S. and overseas with composers, performing artists, poets, visual and dance artists and rock bands. With these collaborations she has worked on new music and new music theatre and opera pieces, often premiering the new works. Notable artists she has worked with include; Baba Olatunji, Vanessa Redgrave and Meredith Monk. Other performance projects include; soloist for The Old Moscow Circus in Japan as well as music director and composer for an all-woman cast of "Julius Caesar” (“Juli Caesar”).

Ms. Onorato has been an instructor for the Tuneful Sequence and Orff Ensemble program at Turtle Bay Music School since 1997 and Administrative Coordinator since 2001. She is also a public school outreach music education specialist for P.S. 59 in Manhattan (since 1998) and P.S. 34 in Brooklyn (2006). She received her Orff Schulwerk training at the Bloomingdale House of Music in New York City and continues her Orff studies at Brooklyn Conservatory and through Trevor Day School workshops on a regular basis. Ms. Onorato was awarded a grant in 2008 and 2009 to go to Florida and participate in West African drumming and dance with Gordy Ryan, a prodigy of Babatunde “Baba” Olatunji. She also received a grant to participate in The Womyn's Drumming and Percussion workshops in upstate New York and studied with Mali drum master Mamadou McKane at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music. She presently studies the drum set with Brazilian Percussionist Nick Birmelin at Turtle Bay Music School. Patti, along with her colleague, Deborah Auer, created an interactive concert program “What Is Orff?” and has presented it at Turtle Bay Music School, the Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, and Solar One.