Charles Whitmer

Charles Whitmer is a former middle school band director in Texas. He taught music in the public schools from 1982 to 2016. He also formerly taught music for the Department of Defense Dependents Schools (DoDDS) at the US Army’s Camp Zama in Japan as well as he most recently taught band for the Santa Fe Public Schools in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

He has a Bachelor of Music Degree in Education (1980) and a Master of Curriculum & Instruction (music education) Degree (1989) both from the University of Houston. He is a member of the Texas Music Educators Association and the Association of Texas Small School Bands.

He currently has 700+ traditional songs in print arranged for autoharp for which he is known internationally as well as he has a new 20 volume set of fakebooks of 732 traditional songs, Traditional Music Fakebook Series, available from J. W. Pepper on his My Score page with J. W. Pepper.

In 2008 he was inducted into the Autoharp Hall of Fame. He was a staff member of former Autoharp Quarterly for many years as a sheet music editor and was also a long-time staff member for i.a.d. Publications, another former international quarterly magazine for autoharp enthusiasts.

He is the author/arranger of a major book publication for concert bands, 52 Hymns and Chorales for Winds, published by Wingert-Jones Publications that consists of a conductor’s score, piano book and 20 different parts books.

His current workshops are primarily teaching autoharp classes at various festivals across the US and in Japan. He also teaches workshops in Sacred Harp shape note singing, an American folk hymn tradition from where many of the chorales in his concert band chorale collection originated.

He is co-founder of The Midwest Autoharp Academy in Leavenworth, Kansas along with fellow Autoharp Hall of Fame member Tom Schroeder.