Donna Messer

Donna Messer (recorder) is founder and president of the Highland Park Recorder Society (HPRS, 1987). She studied piano with Olga von Till, recorder with Bernard Krainis, Howard Vogel, Phil Levin, and Deborah Booth; Dalcroze solfege, eurhythmics and improvisation with Dr. Hilda Schuster of the Dalcroze School of Music in New York, and Early Music at Mannes College of Music with Paul Echols and Valerie Horst. She supplemented these studies by attending music workshops and master classes with Bernard Krainis, Paul Leenhouts, Han Tol, Marion Verbruggen and Bart Spanhove. She studied the Suzuki method for teaching recorder with Mary Halverson Waldo, and applied it in teaching immigrant students from South America.

She attended the First Biennial American Recorder Society Teaching Seminar in San Marcos, Texas, attending lectures by recorder and flute scholar Edgar Hunt, and earned recorder and music teacher certification from the American Recorder Society. She has performed as soloist with the Woodbridge Academy of Music Chamber Orchestra, with the Highland Park Recorder Society, the Garden State Sinfonia, and the College of New Jersey Choir and Choir Orchestra. She performed in 2023 and 2024 in the Highland Park Recorder Society’s concerts of “Irish Musical Traditions.” She performed in 2024, 2025 and 2026 with the Baroque Orchestra of the Amherst Early Music Festival.

Donna currently performs with the Highland Park Recorder Society, and the Consort Studio Workshop ensemble of the HPRS, and performed with Musica Dolce, the Baroque ensemble of the Highland Park Recorder Society, presenting performances for many years at the annual Guild for Early Music Festival at Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, and in Princeton, NJ. For 2026-2027 she arranged to have the Consort Studio Workshop ensemble present a one-hour free concert at the conclusion of thirteen monthly Consort Studio workshops.

Donna is a member of the American Recorder Society, Early Music America, the Guild for Early Music, the Suzuki Association of the Americas and NAVRS, the North American Virtual Recorder Society.