Faculty and Guest Artists

Mason Atha is a West Virginia-based music educator, bassist, and guitarist driven by a deep desire to share the joy of music through performance and teaching. His musical specialties include folk, bluegrass, and jazz, and his performance experience includes venues and events such as Nashville’s Station Inn and the International Bluegrass Music Association’s World of Bluegrass. Mason enjoys teaching learners of all ages and currently teaches middle school choir and orchestra in Nicholas County, WV. He also regularly presents workshops throughout the state. Mason holds a Bachelor of Music in Music Education from West Virginia University, where he studied bass with Andrew Kohn and Paul Thompson. Mason’s teaching emphasizes developing technical skills alongside meaningful musical understanding. His work underscores a belief in music as a vehicle for connection, creativity, and community.

Chanler Bailey has been involved in the percussive arts in one form or another - private lessons, Drum & Bugle Corps, collegiate drumline instructor - since a very young age.While a Percussion Performance major at West Virginia University, Chanler began playing steel drums as part of WVU's World Music Program, under the direction of Dr. Phil Faini. He was a member of WVU's Percussion '90 Ensemble that traveled across West Virginia to share World Music. In 1992, as part of this World Music Center initiative, steel drum pioneer, Dr. Ellie Mannette came to WVU and formed the University Tuning Project to pass on the steel drum art form. Chanler began his apprenticeship as a steel drum craftsman, tuner, and clinician at that time. Chanler created cbStudios in 2007 to reconnect with teaching and performing. His classes meet weekly and perform at fundraisers and festivals throughout West Virginia. He began teaching steel band at West Virginia University in 2021. Additionally, Chanler builds, tunes, and makes accessories for the steel drum. For over 20 years, he has been a craftsman for Mannette Instruments, guided by the late Dr. Mannette, and travels as a tuner and clinician.

Katelyn Best is a Teaching Assistant Professor of Musicology at West Virginia University. A musicologist and vocalist by training, she earned her B.M. in vocal performance from Saint Mary’s College followed by her M.M. and Ph.D. in musicology from Florida State University. She served as a lecturer for the Department of Musicology at Florida State University as well as the Department of Anthropology and African Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University. She was also Co-Director of the Florida State University’s Andean Ensemble and Director of the World Music Ensemble Summer Music Program.As a scholar, her research explores music in Deaf culture, hip hop, sound studies, musical movements, and cultural activism. She received a Carol Krebs Research Fellow Award to conduct fieldwork throughout the U.S. and was awarded the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM) Crossroads Music and Social Justice Paper Prize and the SEM Applied Ethnomusicology Paper/Project Prize for work based on this research. She has presented this work both nationally and internationally and has published articles within Lied und Populäre Kultur and the Journal of American Sign Languages and Literatures, a peer-reviewed digital journal with publications in American Sign Language. Recent publications include “Expanding Musical Inclusivity: Representing and Re-presenting Music and Deaf Culture through Deaf Hip Hop Performance” in Participatory Approaches to Music and Democracy and “Ethnocentrism 2.0: The Impact of Hearing-Centrism on Musical Expression in Deaf Culture” in At the Crossroads: Music and Social Justice. She was also a founding committee member and former chair for the SEM Disability and Deaf Studies Special Interest Group. She currently serves as Co-Director and Publicist for the Society for Ethnomusicology Orchestra and is co-editor of At the Crossroads: Music and Social Justice (Indiana University Press).

Patricia Shehan Campbell is Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington, where she taught courses at the interface of education and ethnomusicology for 33 years. With three Fulbright awards (in India, China, and Canada) and grant-funded projects in Bulgaria, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Myanmar, and Tanzania, she frequently lectures on “music as a pathway to intercultural understanding”. Her work is in World Music Pedagogy and children’s musical cultures, with multiple publications that include Global Music Cultures, Teaching Music Globally, Songs in Their Heads, Music, Education and Diversity, the Oxford Handbook on Children’s Musical Cultures, Oxford’s 28-volume Global Music Series, and the Routledge World Music Pedagogy Series. Campbell is recipient of the 2012 Taiji Award and the 2017 Koizumi Prize for work on the preservation of traditional music through educational practice, and was named an Honorary Member of the Society for Ethnomusicology in 2021. She is an educational consultant for Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, the Association for Cultural Equity, and the Global Jukebox, and serves as chair of Chamwino Connect, an NGO for the sustainability of music, arts, and culture in a Tanzanian village.

Taras Filenko is a noted scholar and performer of Ukrainian music. A graduate of the National Academy of Music in Kyiv, Dr. Filenko went on to serve as a member of the faculty and eventually as Associate Dean of Conducting and Voice. From the Academy, he was awarded a Ph.D. in historic musicology, later earning a doctorate in Ethnomusicology from the University of Pittsburgh. For over forty years, Dr. Filenko has worked in the fields of History of Music, Ethnomusicology, and Music Performance (piano, organ, and choir directing), successfully combining his work as scholar, teacher, and performer. He has presented concerts throughout Europe and North America, making numerous media appearances promoting the works of contemporary Ukrainian composers. Dr. Filenko is a recipient of numerous academic awards, among them two Fulbright scholarships. The themes of his academic publications (more than 100) embrace ethnic studies, musical culture and politics, ethnomusicology, and music and poetry. Together with Tamara Bulat, he authored The World of Mykola Lysenko: Ethnic Identity, Music Culture and Politics, in both English and Ukrainian versions. A central theme of Dr. Taras Filenko’s long musical career is playing and writing about Ukrainian composers. The full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in February, 2022, has brought this endeavor into sharper focus. Repression of Ukrainian culture by outside forces is not new, but once again Ukraine, both as a sovereign nation and as a wellspring of unique language and culture, is facing an existential threat. For Taras, music is his weapon. For the past three years, Taras has volunteered his time and knowledge to organize and perform in numerous locations. These concerts bring the compelling sounds of Ukrainian music and poetry to new audiences. Each presentation is threaded together with commentary providing context and insight, and, where possible, enhanced by projected slides of Ukrainian visual art and contemporary photography. Frequently, Taras collaborates with other artists, including musicians, poets and visual artists. Invitations for Taras’s performances have come from across the United States, as well as locations around the world. In the past year alone, Taras has given concerts, lectures and master classes in Mexico, India, Armenia, Georgia and Colombia. The sponsors for these events have been embassies, colleges and universities, houses of worship and cultural organizations. Many of these events are fundraisers, gathering hundreds of thousands of dollars from generous individuals for humanitarian relief. Every performance is also a “friend raiser,” bringing to a wider public a deeper understanding of Ukrainian cultural history and the current plight of Ukraine’s embattled people. For this work, Taras was recognized in late 2024 as “Ukrainian of the Year” by the Ukrainian Technological Society of Pittsburgh.

Chris Haddox is an Associate Professor in the WVU School of Art and Design where he teaches courses on sustainable design as it relates to the built environment. His creative scholarship is centered on researching the rich folk music heritage of the southern West Virginia coalfield counties. Chris is a busy singer/songwriter who shares his original music in venues such as Mountain State, The Livingston Songwriter Festival, down to small house concerts and everything in between. His original songs often reflect his experiences growing up in southern West Virginia.

Sarah Hann is a music educator and percussionist residing in Lewisburg, WV. She graduated from Indiana University of Pennsylvania with a B.S. in Music Education and holds an M.M. in Percussion Performance from Winthrop University. In addition to teaching elementary music, she has presented numerous professional development sessions on topics including Hand Drumming, Bucket Drumming & John Cage, Children's Literature in the Elementary Music Classroom, and Women Composers in the Elementary Music Curriculum. She is a recipient of the Greenbrier County Teacher of the Year award and the West Virginia Society for General Music Teacher of the Year award. Her article "The Making of Future Folklorists" was recently published in Teaching Music magazine.

Bridget is the Instruction & Public Services Archivist at the West Virginia & Regional History Center, the archives and special collections of WVU Libraries. She works with students and instructors who want to incorporate archival materials into their projects and classes and with researchers who visit from all over the state, region, and beyond. Bridget found her way to her first shape-note singing in 2015 and has been chasing this music across various state lines ever since, participating in local groups in Houston and Washington, D.C. and traveling to conventions across the South and Mid-Atlantic to become part of this tradition and its remarkable community. She attended the Sacred Harp Musical Heritage Association’s Camp Fasola in 2019 and the debut of the new edition of The Sacred Harp in 2025. Currently she is co-organizing a local group in Morgantown and will never miss a chance to teach someone how to sing the shapes.