T. Blair Taylor, class of '99 needs no introduction.
During her time at EHS, Blair's love of music was no secret as she was a member of the Vesper's choir all three years she attended Episcopal. As a senior, Blair was a featured soloist on the school choir's first full length, recorded album and she was the 1999 recipient of the Charles C. Plummer Award for Excellence in Choir.
After graduating from EHS, Blair took her interest in sports from her days at Episopal as both a football and basketball manager as well as a student athletic trainer and earned her B.S. in Sports Management from Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina in 2003.
Oddly enough, after undergrad, her desire to help others put her on a path of providing reader services to both civil service and foreign service officers with visual disabilities at the Department of State. During her eight years at STATE, she was assigned to Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago; Cape Town, South Africa and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates on temporary duty (TDY) where she facilitated daily communications with the diplomatic core, members of Parliament/ Monarchy, business leaders and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in addition to coordinating the logistics for officials meetings for multiple STATE Special Envoys and a U.S Congressional Delegations.
The itch for music never left Blair and she found her way back to music in 2008 as one third of a Washington, DC based R&B group, Auteur. Simultaneously, she trained under vocal coach, Eric Arceneaux of the popular AApproach to not only undergo a vocal transformation but to also become a certified vocal coach for AApproach, for which she has been since 2009.
Her musical efforts led her to record several singles with Auteur before her solo debut in 2011 with her independent LP, 'Pretty Monster', a work acclaimed by Grammy award-winning Jill Scott as, "...gangsta!". Her desire for music inspired her to switch careers all together and Blair became a full time vocal coach in 2013. Using Approach's modern vocal pedagogy, she served as the Assistant Vocal Director at the Maryland Performing Arts Center in Severna Park, MD from 2012- 2015. During her time at MPAC, she was named Teacher of the Year in 2014. In 2015, Blair combined her love for music, helping others and children and joined the SEED Public Charter School of Washington, DC, the nation's first public charter boarding school as the Vocal Director of the award-winning SEED Falcon Theatre. She is also a grade team lead Student Life Counselor for the Student Life Department. Her passion for minority children living in underserved communities in Washington DC (Ward 7 and 8) to connect to the arts is evident as her students showcase their productions annually at THEARC in Washington, DC and at the annual Junior Theatre Festival in Atlanta and Sacramento.
Blair is currently in the process of earning her iTheatrics certification, an internationally recognized children's theatrical teaching method.