Sydney Forest Taylor

Director of Knauer Music School / Music Consultant

Sydney has been a part of the Knauer Music School Family as Director since August 2023 and brings a breadth of experience to the role of director from her seasons in the music industry as a publisher, performer, songwriter, instructor, marketer, and most importantly a mom.

Sydney has a degree in musical theater from Cal State Fullerton. While primarily being a performer, she found a deeper love for directing large scale children’s musical theater productions in San Diego coordinating cast and crews and parent teams of productions (like Annie, Cinderella, Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan, Tom Sawyer, etc). Yet, her post-college interests took a different turn.

In her growth, Sydney began discovering that songwriting was more of a passion than theater and moved to Los Angeles to build a career in the music business. She became an A&R executive for a LA based boutique music publisher and represented catalogs such as Jimi Hendrix, Chicago, Professor Longhair… and also signed, developed, and worked with new and up and coming artists. She was the founder of “Monday Night Music Club”, a monthly showcase for new talent hosted at Genghis Cohen in Hollywood, and travelled to music conferences, speaking on panels, listening to pitches, and discovering new talent. This paved the way for her own songwriting publishing deal.

Sydney was signed to Disney Music Publishing as an artist and songwriter and began writing for film and tv projects. One of her favorite first projects were songs that were placed in Studio Ghibli/Hayao Miyazaki’s first (American) Disney release in the 1998 version of ‘Kiki’s Delivery Service’ as she co-wrote the songs with her soon to be husband, JT, now married 26 years. This season of life also led to roles in WB shows like “Popular” (Ryan Murphy), session singing on national commercials for Burger King and Bob Evans, and a duet with Graham Nash on his solo album “Songs for Survivors”.

The next season of life was one of motherhood, raising a family, homeschooling, and a series interesting jobs, combining all of her previous experiences. Sydney, and her husband, JT, have raised three children in a very creative household and poured into their kid’s lives with just about every version of classes, curriculums, and experiences that Los Angeles has to offer. It is these successes and definitely the mistakes, that make Sydney uniquely qualified to coach and advise parents and artists of all ages pursuing their journey in music. During this time she has also been in a “think tank” pitching reality show at NBC/Universal, led a national marketing team and social media campaign promoting movies like Dolphin Tale and 42 to the homeschool community for Grace Hill Media/WB, and the most challenging of jobs…teaching 3-5 year olds “Classical Conversations” in her homeschool group.

Through the years, Sydney has been a private vocal, piano, songwriting coach, and music career consultant for aspiring artists and songwriters. She has sat through many music lessons as a parent, given many lessons as a teacher, and battled seasons of kid’s wanting to quit and balanced learning how to listen and when to push. She has one daughter who has gone to high levels of classical piano, level 8 of ABRSM, and on a scholarship in college and another daughter who taught herself guitar on youtube and is a wonderful singer and leads music as a youth leader at church, and a son who has played piano, tried playing baritone in the marching band, currently in the high school choir, and also really loves playing football, basketball and baseball. All with a love for music, in totally different ways.

An additional fun fact, her mother, Gayla Peevey, sang the original version of the Christmas classic “I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas” as a 10 year old in 1953 and debuted it on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Most importantly, Sydney has a heart for music education and deep appreciation for every student’s individuality, young and old. Her joy is to really listen to what a parent or an adult student is seeking, when they take the leap to sign up for a music lesson, and help become a partner in their dreams and goals.

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