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Corey Graves Biography

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Corey Graves

Director of Bands -Themer Middle School

Elected to the Midwest Board: 2021

[email protected]

Corey LaMon Graves is in his seventeenth year of teaching and is the head band director at Themer Middle School in Forney ISD. Prior to this appointment, Mr. Graves served as the head director at Tony A. Jackson Middle School and Roma Middle School for eleven years. He received his Bachelor of Music Education degree as a summa cum laude graduate from Stephen F. Austin State University, and earned a Master of Music in Euphonium Performance from The Ohio State University as a graduate fellow.

 

Mr. Graves is a Bill and Melinda Gates Millennium Scholar. Bands under his direction have consistently received superior sweepstakes ratings at UIL Concert and Sightreading Contest, and have also earned high levels of recognition at both the state and national stage, being recognized as a National and Commended Winner in The Foundation for Music Education National Wind Band contest from 2013-2023. His bands have been consistent state finalists in the Texas Music Educators Association Honor Band Competition, being recently honored as the 2020 TMEA CC Honor Band. The RMS Symphonic Winds were also invited to perform at the 70th Annual Midwest International Band and Orchestra Clinic in Chicago, Illinois. The RMS band program is a 2019 recipient of the John Philip Sousa Foundation Sudler Silver Cup Award and named a Rio Grande Valley Program of Distinction. Mr. Graves was chosen as Roma ISD’s 2013 Secondary Teacher of the Year, Forney ISD’s Secondary Teacher of the Year in 2023, and named the Phi Beta Mu Texas Young Bandmaster of the Year in 2017. He was also named as Yamaha “40 Under 40” Music Teacher of Excellence and a Country Music Awards Music Teacher of Excellence in 2023. He is an active clinician, adjudicator, guest euphoniumist, sits on the Board of Directors for the Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic, is an educational clinician for the Conn-Selmer Division of Education, and maintains professional affiliations with Texas Music Educators Association, Texas Bandmasters Association, Texas Music Adjudicators Association, the UIL Prescribed Music List Committee, and Pi Kappa Lambda National Music Honor Society.

 

Mr. Graves credits his passion for music to his mother, Brenda M. Moore, his drive for success to his grandmother, Mrs. Vergie Graves, and his love of education to an incredible list of music educators across the country.

 

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