OUR COMPOSERS
Laura Farnell
Laura Farnell has a passion for making music with singers, working with educators, and creating accessible and artistic choral compositions. After graduating summa cum laude from Baylor University with her BME in Choral Music (with a piano emphasis), Laura taught public school for ten years at the elementary and junior high levels. She was honored by her schools with Teacher of the Year awards in 2000 and 2003, and she received an Excellence in Education Award in 2004 as the Arlington ISD's outstanding junior high teacher of the year.
Laura presently lives in Arlington, Texas, and serves as an invited music conference presenter, as well as choral clinician for district, region, and state honor choirs across the country. She has served as a clinician for middle school state-wide honor choirs in Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, and North Carolina, and has worked with various other elementary through high-school aged honor choirs. As a composer, she especially enjoys writing and arranging music for developing choirs and is represented by several music publishers. She has more than one hundred choral compositions in publication, including many commissioned pieces and a co-authored beginning sightsinging method book.
She is a member of the Texas Music Educators Association, Texas Choral Directors Association, the Texas Music Adjudicators' Association, and The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. She and her husband, Russell, and their two sons, attend First Presbyterian Church of Arlington where Russell serves as Minister of Music and Laura directs the children's and youth choirs.