Founding Artistic Director

Polly Murray is an accomplished choir director and music teacher in the Camden County area and the Founding Artistic Director of ChildrenSong of New Jersey. Mrs. Murray is also an Elementary and Middle School Vocal Music Specialist on the faculty of the Haddonfield School District, where she teaches Kodály and Orff- Schulwerk-based classroom music and chorus.

Mrs. Murray received her Bachelor of Music degree from Temple University, Master of Music degree from Northwestern University, and has pursued post-graduate work at Westminster Choir College and at the Kodály Institute in Hungary. She has completed certification levels in Kodály and Orff-Schulwerk, and three levels of Choral Music Experience.

She has been featured in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Camden County Courier-Post, and The Retrospect as an outstanding music teacher in the Greater Philadelphia region and has been interviewed on Comcast and NJN’s Classroom Close-Up for her work with ChildrenSong. She has also received numerous awards for teaching, including Partners in Education Golden Apple Teacher Award for Camden County, Outstanding Music Educator award from Merchantville Elementary School, the New Jersey Symphony Master Teacher Award and the Markeim Art Center Applause Award in Music for contributions to the arts in South Jersey. In 2007, she won a teacher fellowship award from the Geraldine Dodge Foundation for study at the Kodály Institute in Kecskemet, Hungary for the Summer Institute Program.

In addition to teaching, Mrs. Murray has presented workshops in elementary classroom and choral music at the New Jersey Music Educator’s State Conference, New Jersey Education Association State Conference, Rowan University, and in local schools. She has also served as the Guest Conductor for the 2005 ACDA New Jersey Elementary Honor Choir and 2001 South Jersey Elementary Festival Chorus. In 2009, she served as the guest choral conductor for the Symphony in C Summer Program at Rutgers-Camden.

Mrs. Murray is a member of the American Choral Director’s Association (ACDA), the Organization of American Kodály Educators (OAKE), and MENC: The National Association for Music Education.

She has been a guest conductor for the New Jersey ACDA Elementary Honor Choir, South Jersey Elementary Honors Band and the South Jersey Elementary Festival Chorus. As a clinician, she has presented workshops in the Cherry Hill School District, Philadelphia Orff-Schulwerk Association meetings, several workshops at the New Jersey Music Educators Association (NJMEA) Educators Conference in New Brunswick in February 2005, and has presented Family Arts & Creativity workshops in Haddonfield.

Mrs. Murray resides in Oaklyn, New Jersey, with her husband and two daughters. She can be reached via email at pmurraychildrensong [dot] org.