Music Box Concert Series

Our Team

Leslie Timmons

Leslie Timmons is Professor Emerita from the Music Department where she taught  the flute studio and music education. She is Orff specialist with the Cache Children's Choir. After completing degrees in Music Education and Flute Performance, she received a Fulbright grant to do post-graduate work at the Orff Institute Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria. As a founding member of Logan Canyon Winds, USU's faculty woodwind quintet, she has helped commission new works that are designed to involve children in live performance. Performing with ~AirFare~ , a duo with clarinetist Nicholas Morrison, has taken them to Haiti, Guatemala, Netherlands, and the Navajo Nation in southeastern Utah.  She is an Artist-in-Residence for Utah Arts Council and has served on the national boards of the American Recorder Society and the American Orff-Schulwerk Association. She was local chair for the AOSA professional conference in Salt Lake City, November 2019. Leslie has been honored with Utah Music Educators Association's "Utah Outstanding Music Educator” and “Elementary Educator of the Year” and was inducted into the UMEA Hall of Fame in 2022. 

Ewa Wilczynski

Ewa Wilczynski has a Masters degree in Music Education from Marie Curie University in Poland.  She has obtained Orff-Schulwerk Teachers Training Certification (Levels 1-3) from Utah State University and completed the International Summer Course 2014 in Carl Orff Institute in Salzburg, Austria. More recently, she completed the 2017 Early Childhood Music Professional Development Course (Level 1) in the Gordon Institute for Music Learning at Temple University. Ewa is an experienced preschool music teacher and has taught flute, piano, and music theory for over 35 years in Poland, New Jersey, and Utah.  She is currently on the faculty of the Youth Conservatory at Utah State University and serves as director of the Cadenza Choir at Cache Children's Choir. Ewa teaches music classes in the Stokes Nature Preschool and offers private lessons in her studio.  She has presented at Utah Early Childhood Conference, Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Utah Chapter of American Orff-Schulwerk Association. Ewa is also a founder of the program "Music for the Small and Tall" where she taught early childhood music and movement classes (2008-2023).  Ewa is a member and serves on the board of the Utah Chapter of the American Orff Schulwerk Association.

Sasha Kasman Laude

Dr. Sasha Kasman Laude, D.M.A. is Assistant Professor of Piano at Utah State University. She is a recipient of numerous national and international honors, named a top prizewinner of the 2022 Honens International Piano Competition (Canada) and one of five finalists for the prestigious 2025 American Pianist Awards. Her playing has been described by the Palm Beach Arts Paper as “powerful and vivid” and having “such an abundance of intelligence that it can only be described as relentless” (Ludwig van Toronto). She is featured on national radio programs such as NPR’s Performance Today, and was a Young Artist-in-Residence of PT in 2019-2020. 2024-2025 season, she appears as a soloist with the Indianapolis and Brevard Symphony Orchestras, Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, and Dover and Fry Street string quartets. Dr. Kasman Laude holds degrees from the Juilliard School and University of Michigan. She is passionate about music outreach, having performed over 100 educational concerts in part as a Fellow of PianoArts of Wisconsin.

Contact Us

Questions or comments about the program? Please call 435-755-0853 or email ewa.wilczynski@usu.edu.