In demand as an performer, educator, and clinician, Catina Franklin Sweedy runs The Clarinet Project on YouTube and Instagram and is the founder and co-director of the Mason Summer Clarinet Academy in Fairfax, Virginia. Inspired by her decades of teaching children and teens, Catina is working to expand the pedagogy for young clarinetists by recording beginner compositions and commissioning new works for younger players by women, a woefully underrepresented demographic in clarinet literature. She will be premiering two of these works at the 2019 ClarinetFest in Knoxville, TN. As a clinician, Catina has presented sessions at Delaware University, George Mason University, the Alternative Education Resource Organization Conference, and MineFaire. She is a performing artist for D’Addario Woodwinds and Rice Clarinet Works.

 

As a performer, Catina is a former member of the Florida Grand Opera, Miami City Ballet Orchestra, Florida Sunshine Pops, Prince William Symphony, and American Festival Pops Orchestra; and she is a past winner of the YWCA Music Club in New York and Matinee Musical Club in Philadelphia solo competitions. Through her attendance at the Casals, Spoleto, Pacific, and and other music festivals, Catina has performed throughout the United States, the Caribbean, Europe, and Japan. Catina holds her M.M in Clarinet Performance from the Manhattan School of Music and her B.M. in Clarinet Performance from the Harid (now Lynn) Conservatory of Music, and was a student Raoul Querze, Paul Green, Yehuda Gilad, and David Krakauer.

 

In addition to her clarinet work, Catina is also a program advisor at Embark Center in Leesburg, Virginia, a self-directed learning hub where teens choose their own educational paths.