A Musical History
North Fulton Music Teachers Association, founded in 1998, was the brain-child of Kathy Cardwell-Wills and fellow Georgia Music Teacher Association members during a GMTA Convention. Fellow GMTA members expressed their desire to Cardwell-Wills that a chapter be formed in North Fulton to address overcrowding in other local chapters in metro Atlanta. Cardwell-Wills, who had just moved from elsewhere in Georgia to the City of Roswell, took up the charge.
Having served as president for Cherokee Music Teachers Association and Gwinnett Music Teachers Association, Cardwell-Wills was well suited for the task. With help from GMTA member Susan Andrews and Doug Breland, a sheet music specialist with the Alpharetta Music & Arts, she contacted music teachers in North Fulton, and gathered enough of them to form a foundation for establishing officers, and creating mailings to solicit additional members. Early board positions were held by Paula Wamsley, Ruth Mantooth and Lisa Handman.
"I am especially proud of our international origins represented by our founding members," said Cardwell-Wills. "Our members included music teachers from Russia, China, Japan, Korea and many other countries, as well as America." This international representation still holds true today.
Cardwell-Wills wrote the constitution and bylaws for the North Fulton Music Teachers Association. Early NFMTA meetings were held at Music & Arts in Alpharetta, Ga. and later moved to Northminster Presbyterian Church in Roswell, Ga.
NFMTA's core programs, Fall Festival and Celebrate With Music, were born during these early years. Fall Festival provides a platform for music students who typically do not enter competitive auditions, to perform in a noncompetitive setting, receive feedback and be rated by a college-level music professor. Celebrate With Music gives students who might get nervous performing in a formal recital, a chance to perform in a fun, low-stress environment while people do their holiday shopping at the mall.
Kathy Cardwell-Mills, originally from Charleston, S.C., has served as a Georgia Federation of Music Clubs judge as well as an American College of Musicians Piano Guild judge. She received her bachelor's degree in piano and voice performance from the Baptist College of Charleston. She completed her master's degree in piano pedagogy at the University of South Carolina. She conducted post-graduate studies in organ and harpsichord.
NFMTA currently has a scholarship program, which awards funds to students for music study in summer camps, in her name.
Cardwell-Wills, music director for Faith Presbyterian Church in Blue Ridge, Ga., currently resides in Murphy, N.C. She teaches piano there, as well as online and in her home. She married Harold Wills in 2020.