Sheri Melcher, Director of the Creative and Performing Arts Academy of NEPA, is a professional pianist, musical theater director, choral conductor and educator. She is the recipient of the 2016 PA Theater Guide’s Person of the Year Award and has been selected as one of Northeast Pennsylvania Business Journal’s Top 25 Women in Business for 2017.   She has enjoyed an extensive performance career, including chamber music recitals at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall with Philadelphia Orchestra musicians Richard Amoroso (violin) and Adam Unsworth (horn).  She has performed in recital with internationally acclaimed violinist Eugene Fodor at the Kennedy Center, bass-baritone Eric J. Owens and with members of the Baltimore and National Symphony Orchestras.  Sheri has collaborated with The Concert Opera of Philadelphia, Astral Artistic Services, The Choral Society of Montgomery Country, The Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia and The Philadelphia Singers

As a sought after music director for middle and high school, college and community theater programs, Sheri has directed hundreds of productions.  Sheri is particularly proud of her work as the music director for Harry Connick, Jr’s new children’s musical, The Happy Elf, which premiered in 2012 at the Pennsylvania Youth Theater in Bethlehem, PA. She served as music director for an extended run in Scranton, PA in 2014 and for the cast recording, which can be heard through Musical Theater International. She is the music director for Northampton Community College’s fall musicals, an adjunct faculty member at Marywood University and the organist/choir director at Jarrettown United Methodist Church in Dresher, PA.

As a member of the music faculty at Springside-Chestnut Hill Academy in Philadelphia for 20 years, Sheri taught upper and middle school music history, music theory and world music, while co-directing the Boychoir, Upper School Chamber Singers and the Middle School Drama Program.  During her tenure at SCH, she was honored with the E. Perot Walker Prize for Teaching Excellence and named a Cy Nathan Faculty Chair as the representative for the combined music and art departments.

A graduate of The Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University and Temple University’s Esther Boyer College of Music, Sheri holds Bachelor degrees in Piano Performance and Music Education as well as Masters Degrees in Piano Accompanying and Pedagogy. Her teachers have included Fernando Laires, Marian Hahn and Lambert Orkis.