Courtney Nottingham

Courtney Nottingham is a PhD student in Music and Human Learning at The University of Texas at Austin. Nottingham originates from northeast Kansas. Her first three years of teaching were spent in Kansas City, Kansas, where she taught elementary orchestra and served as a middle and high school assistant. After her time in Kansas City, Nottingham was named the director of orchestras at Washburn Rural High School in Topeka, Kansas. During her two years at Washburn Rural, she grew the orchestra program from 60 to 100 students, and her Chamber Orchestra was selected to perform at the Kansas Music Educators Association state convention.

During the summertime, Nottingham teaches at Interlochen Arts Camp in Interlochen, Michigan. She served as ensemble manager for the World Youth Symphony Orchestra for four summers, where she worked with world-renowned conductors such as JoAnn Falletta and Cristian Macelaru. Nottingham now holds a faculty position at Interlochen as the Instructor of Instrument Exploration and Director of the Junior Band.

Nottingham holds a bachelor's in Music Education from the University of Kansas and master's in Music Education from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. During her time at UMKC, Nottingham developed a resource titled "Spanish-Language Folk Songs for Strings" which serves as a culturally relevant resource for beginning orchestra students. This project was inspired by her time teaching in Kansas City, where 90% of her students were Hispanic. Nottingham presented this resource at the 2023 Kansas Music Educators Association state convention and the 2024 Texas Music Educators Association state convention. Nottingham is a recipient of the 2025 Rainwater Grant, which will fund creating audio recordings of this resource.

Nottingham is a native clarinetist and grew up in instrumental band education. Her career aspiration is to become a music education professor and conductor that can provide quality education for both wind and string instrumentalists.