Clarinet students at Brandeis High School in New York City.

Marissa’s career as an educator is as vast and varied as her performance career and is especially driven to working with special populations such as the gifted, those suffering from traumatic brain injury and dementia, and inner city communities.

Work with the elderly has taken multiple faces for Marissa, whether teaching a line dance class of Silver Sneakers at the YWCA, or one on one music instruction with a victim of traumatic brain injury, or a twenty-four hour job as a primary caregiver. Every experience has inspired compassion for those who struggle to maintain dignity as their minds and bodies change and their needs intensify. Marissa has seen first hand the benefits of incorporating music and movement into the daily routine of these special populations and is committed to finding her place in the continuing study of the impact of music on the human brain.

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Marissa is excited about her participation in the last two seasons as a teaching artist and performer with the Open Dream Ensemble, which is an opportunity to educate children through the arts as well as play clarinet, sing, dance and act with state of the art colleagues. In 2010, Marissa worked with the Harmony Program in New York City as the clarinet instructor at P.S. 129, a public elementary school in Harlem. She has been a clarinet teacher at Brandeis High School, Bard High School/Early College, and the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York City. She taught college classes in Music Appreciation at the Globe Institute of Technology, and Marissa has been on the faculty as chamber music coach at the Académie Musicale Internationale in Vaison-la-Romaine, Southern France.

Students at P.S. 229 in Harlem- and the teachers of the Harmony Program, led by Anne Fitzgibbon