Charisse has over 25 years of experience as a professional clarinetist and piano and clarinet instructor. As an author Charisse has contributed regularly for Catholicmom.com for over a decade. She has also had her writings published in the book “The Catholic Mom’s Prayer Companion” and “Family Foundations” magazine. She continues an active blog on Catholicmom.com as well as her own personal blogs Paving the Path to Purity and Montessori Piano.

She currently teaches at Air House Music Academy in West Wichita and has performed with the Wichita Symphony and the Wichita Grand Opera. A native of Kansas, she participated in many of the local music ensembles and events that are still active today, including the Wichita Youth Symphony and the KMEA All State Orchestra. An Anderson Concerto Competition winner on two separate occasions, Charisse has also appeared as a soloist with the Hutchinson Symphony on both piano and clarinet.

Charisse holds a bachelor of clarinet performance degree from Wichita State University, and a master of clarinet performance degree from the prestigious New England Conservatory in Boston.

Charisse has attended many of the world’s foremost summer music festivals, including Interlochen Arts Camp, Aspen Music Festival, Sarasota Music Festival, National Orchestral Institute, and Tanglewood Music Center, where she performed alongside and studied with members of the Boston Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Colorado Symphony and other major symphony orchestras.

Charisse has extensive experience in orchestral, chamber music, and solo performance. Other honors include being a prize winner at the International Clarinet Association solo competition, being named a Yamaha Young Performing Artist, and performing with the New World Symphony in Miami, Florida, under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas.

In more recent years, Charisse has enjoyed running piano and clarinet studios of various sizes, successfully guiding students through auditions and competitions, and holding studio recitals so all of her students can perform in a welcome and safe setting. She has had numerous students receive outstanding ratings at regional and state level solo contests, earn a seat in the district and all state ensembles, and win such honors as first prize in the Anderson Concerto Competition.

When she isn’t writing, performing or teaching, Charisse stays busy at home in west Wichita with her husband and seven children, who have all provided her with great insight into how to teach different personalities and temperaments.