Donna Morse is currently the founder and director of the Monadnock New Horizons Band in Keene, NH as well as the musical director for the Nelson, NH Town Band, a private teacher and free lance musician. 

In 2013 Diane Muffitt found Donna’s name on a community band director list and invited her to the New England Adult Music Camp. While at the camp, Donna met Roy Ernst and learned about the New Horizons music programs. With this information, she returned to Keene and started the Monadnock New Horizons Band(MNHB) in the Fall of 2014. The band is going strong bringing together adult musicians of all ages to learn to make music together.

Donna is a founding member and plays lead saxophone in the Keene Jazz Orchestra and has also performed with the Vermont Jazz Center Big Band, Boston’s White Heat Orchestra, East Bay Jazz Band, the Temptations, and the Les DeMerle Big Band on a Caribbean cruise, as well as many classical, jazz and pit orchestra gigs in the northern New England area including playing keyboard and singing backup for the local band, The Nines, from 2006-2015. She plays clarinets, saxophones, flute, piccolo, and piano.

Donna loves teaching private lessons in her own studio in Keene, NH area and at The Putney School. Her students have auditioned and have been accepted for NAfME All-National Honor Ensembles, NH All-state, NH Jazz All-State, VT All State, New England Music Festival, NH Honors Band, and the MA Central District Music Festival.

Her music education began in Miami around 50 years ago(yikes!) with piano lessons. She started clarinet in 6th grade and played in Florida All-state festivals, district festivals, and four years in the Orange Bowl parade.

After graduating from Bucknell University, Donna expanded her woodwind playing to flute and saxophone, studying flute with Shirley Gilpin and Julie Armstrong, studying saxophone and applied jazz harmony with Scott Mullett, John Mastriani, and Mark Pinto and studying jazz piano and harmony with Eugene Uman of the Vermont Jazz Center.

Donna, who loves playing music, traveling and sewing, lives in Keene, NH with her husband, Dave, and her ridiculous cat Chili.