Educational Background/Training
B.A. Music Theory and Composition, George Washington University
About the Artist/Ensemble
Paul Reisler has written more songs than the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and Stephen Foster combined—somewhere north of 3,500 compositions. And, he’s probably had more than enough collaborators to make it into the Guinness Book of World records—approaching 40,000 and counting (though he’s lost count). He’s written songs with tens of thousands of children through his Kid Pan Alley project and he’s written songs with a bunch of Grammy winning songwriters. Artists including Sissy Spacek, Raul Malo, Cracker, Corey Harris, Jesse Winchester and many others have recorded his songs.
Paul has been performing and writing for over 40 years. He was the founder of Trapezoid and performed close to 3,000 concerts worldwide. He has been involved in over 35 recording projects in various roles as a musician, producer and composer. He currently leads 2 bands, Paul Reisler and a Thousand Questions as well as Paul Reisler & Three Good Reasons.
He is the founder and director of Kid Pan Alley where he has written over 2,500 songs with over 40,000 children nationally.
He’s one of the most popular songwriting teachers in North America and has taught at workshops and songwriting schools including Rocky Mountain Song School, Utah Song School, Swannanoa Gathering, Blue Ridge Songcamp, Augusta Workshop, Hollyhock, Folk Alliance, Kerrville, Nashville Songwriters Association, Omega Institute, Moulin a Nef in S. France, Songcamp in the Mountains, Puget Sound Guitar Workshop, and many others.
He wrote the full-length piece Aesop’s Fables for Orchestra and Narrator with co-writers Art Wheeler and Tom Paxton. He’s just completed writing a musical entitled Bouncin’ in which he wrote the songs as well as the script.
Educational Program Description
Kid Pan Alley’s mission is to inspire and empower children to work together to become creators of their own music and to rekindle creativity as a core value in education through the group songwriting process. During KPA residency programs, children experience the entire creative process from the blank page through performance and recording as they work together to develop the lyrics and melody for their song. all They learn about rhyme, melody, developing ideas, poetic devices, song structure, emotional content and much more in the process of actually co-writing a song with KPA professional songwriters.
Single day assembly programs are also available in which the children write extra verses for songs that will be performed in the assembly
Audiences
- All Ages