IFAA Staff Bios
Rebecca Winston
Director of IFAA, Musical Theatre Instructor, Private Lessons
Rebecca Winston has taught, directed, and performed for over 20 years and brings a wealth of experience to IFAA. She has sung with orchestras, opera companies, and theaters nationwide and internationally, bringing a wealth of practical experience to the teaching studio. She has taught students from grade school through adult, and her specialties include classical voice, musical theatre, choral music, and audition preparation. Mrs. Winston currently serves as Choral Director, Musical Director, and Fine Arts Director at Immanuel Lutheran Christian Academy and Choral Director for Immanuel Lutheran Church in Broken Arrow.
Mrs. Winston received her Masters Degree in Vocal Performance from the University of North Texas where she first began teaching as a Teaching Fellow. She has performed several roles with the Fort Worth Opera and was a frequent soloist with The Orchestra of New Spain traveling to San Miguel and Guanajuato, Mexico to perform at the International Cervantino Festival with the group. She has also appeared as a soloist with many other orchestras and chamber groups, including the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, The Brazos Valley Orchestra, The Florida Orchestra, The Lewisville Lake Symphony, American Chamber Choir, Voces Intimae, Camerata Winds, and the Flower Mound Chamber Orchestra. Prior to moving to Tulsa, Mrs. Winston was a voice instructor for 11 years at the University of Texas at Arlington, and served as Director of Choral Activities for Lamb of God Lutheran Church in Flower Mound for 18 years.
Julie Winegarten
Drawing and Painting
As the daughter of a landscape architect father and a home economics mother, Julie Winegarten learned all the skills to be artistic and creative as a child. She learned symmetry, asymmetry, color, and texture from nature and her father’s designs.
Ms. Winegarten received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting and Printmaking and taught classes in painting, printmaking, drawing, and Color & Amp; Design at RSC until 1995. She then moved to Oral Roberts University to teach printmaking while homeschooling her four children. In 2005, she began teaching in Tulsa Public Schools at McLain High School and later at Mitchell Elementary, where she teaches PK-6th grade art. Learning to “see” accurately is the most important part of drawing. If one can see it, then one can draw it. Ms. Winegarten’s goal is to help students learn to ‘see’ more accurately and therefore then draw more accurately.
Teddy Scott has over 20 years of experience in writing, producing, touring, teaching, and recording music. He teaches guitar, mandolin, ukulele, and bass and has always had a very high retention rate among students. He loves to listen to and teach all kinds of music, including blues, country, rock, pop, praise & worship, hip-hop, indie, folk, and classical. He currently plays lead guitar for Life Church Jenks and Life Church Broken Arrow. He also plays with Syd Trio, Jesse Joice, and The Brothers Moore, who recently signed a management deal with CTK management, managers of Dolly Parton, Kenny G, KC & The Sunshine Band, Dennis Quaid, and Geri Halliwell (Ginger Spice).
Teddy Scott
Guitar and Ukelele
Michael O’Dell
Preschool Tumbling
Coach Michael has been coaching trampoline and tumbling since 2002 and has coached multiple national champions. He loves competition but enjoys even more seeing his own teams cheer on athletes from other gyms.
Michael competed himself for over 20 years, placing in the 2 or 3 at Nationals multiple times, competing six times between 2000 and 2014. He qualified as senior elite in every event but specialized in trampoline in 2014 and 2015 before retiring.
Coach Michael is dedicated to God and his family. He is married to his beautiful wife, Kate, and has three children: Alice, Emma, and his precious baby, D.J. Their family attends Immanuel Lutheran Church in Broken Arrow. They have two cats (Bert and Dinah), two parakeets (Ben and Belle), and a Guinea pig named Oscar.
Catalina Simmonds has been a musician for 32 years and a music educator for almost 20. She studied violin and viola in the Dallas area and received her Bachelor’s Degree in Music Performance in Viola and a Master’s in Music Education at Southern Methodist University. From teaching private violin, viola, and classical guitar lessons to over 200 6th-grade beginners at Union Public Schools, she has taught hundreds of beginner to university-level students.
Catalina worked with students in the Dallas and Frisco, Texas area before moving to Ada, Oklahoma, where she taught at East Central University before continuing in the classroom in Tulsa at Broken Arrow Public Schools and now at the Union 6&7 Center where she has taught six years. She is a substitute violist for the Tulsa Symphony and Symphony of Northwest Arkansas and plays the Candlelight Concert series at the GAST. Catalina enjoys spending time with her husband Zac and her 9-year-old twins Ford and Sloane.
Catalina Simmonds
Strings Class
Ashley Cannon
Piano
Growing up with a grandfather who was a music minister and a mother who was a worship leader most of her childhood, Ashley Cannon knew a musical career was in her future. After graduating high school in Las Cruces NM, she moved to Waco TX. to pursue her Music Degree at Baylor University in the fall of 2010.
While pursuing her degree, Mrs. Cannon led worship for kids' church at the local church she attended, as well as teaching private piano and violin. She graduated in May of 2016 and shortly after I began teaching piano, voice, and violin at Velocity Music Academy in Austin. After a year of teaching at Velocity, she opened her home studio. A few years ago, her husband’s job brought the family to Broken Arrow, where she has enjoyed time as a stay-at-home mom to her two wonderful children.