Meet Our Team

Steve Fidyk

President/Creative Director

For more than 21 years, Steve Fidyk was the drummer and featured soloist with the Army Blues Big Band, a premier 17-piece jazz ensemble stationed in Washington DC. During his tenure, he performed for seven US presidents, numerous dignitaries and in 2008, traveled throughout the Middle East supporting the troops during a USO Holiday Tour. Currently, Steve leads “The Parlour Project,” a small group featuring his original arrangements and compositions. He is also a member of the Jazz Orchestra of Philadelphia under the direction of trumpeter Terell Stafford. 

As an educator, Fidyk is a member of the jazz studies faculty at Temple University and The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is an educational consultant for Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Essentially Ellington program and conductor of the Chesapeake Youth Jazz Ensemble. He has authored several critically acclaimed drum method books for Mel Bay and Alfred publications, and regularly contributes columns to Modern Drummer and Teaching Music Magazine. ​

Emily Tevault

Treasurer/Secretary

​Emily Tevault, MBA, CPC is Vice President, Programs & Producktivity® with BSCorbett Consulting, LLC. She is a coach, trainer, and consultant in time management, intentional growth,
and project management. Emily uses her 18 years of nonprofit accounting, finance, and management experience with educational organizations and associations to establish trust, build
relationships, and connect the pieces of the puzzle. She believes that being productive requires a commitment to intentional personal and professional growth.

Emily sees life as a sequence of
processes to be identified, created, and made more effective and applies the Producktivity® Principles: Identify. Connect. Organize. in her own life and with her clients to move ideas to
action.

​She received a Master of Business Administration with a concentration in finance from
The Johns Hopkins University and a bachelor’s degree in Viola Performance from The Peabody
Institute of The Johns Hopkins University. Emily is an International Coach Academy Certified
Professional Coach, John Maxwell Team Certified Coach, Speaker, and Teacher, and a Maxwell
Certified DISC® Trainer.

Chris Kaplan

Vice President

Chris Kaplan is a senior associate instructional technologist for Diamond Information Systems and has been creating online learning experiences and learning for the real world for nearly 20 years.

As an audio engineer and composer, Chris has worked on productions for National Geographic, TLC, America’s Most Wanted, written music for numerous training programs and in 2005, with Two Animators! LLP , was a finalist for Best Cartoon at the Flash Forward Film Festival for his work on The Poochinos—Dog Mafia. 

Chris's experience includes teaching trumpet for Music and Arts Center and has performed with Blue Miracle, Eastern Standard Time and other local groups.  He has performed in local productions over the years including West Side Story, Kiss me Kate, Oliver! and most recently Chicago.

Chris consistently finds himself drawn to the potential for using technology to create learning opportunities, resources and frameworks that support the human aspects of teaching and learning.

He received his bachelors in Music Composition with an emphasis in jazz from the University of Maryland and has completed significant coursework towards a master of distance education from UMUC.