Our Coaches

DOUG LONGMAN, String Coach

I grew up in Santa Rosa, California, starting violin at the age of 7. Santa Rosa was (and is) a vibrant music scene just north of San Francisco. After graduating from High School, I took the big plunge and went off to Baldwin-Wallace Conservatory in Cleveland, Ohio to pursue a music performance degree.

When I came back to California, I discovered that my main interest wasn’t really in performance, but rather in education, which led me to get my teaching credential from the University of Southern California. When the taxpayer revolt shook California and thousands of young teachers were laid off, I headed north to find a new home. Issaquah didn’t have an orchestra program, but it seemed like a good place to maybe start one (as well as a family!).

I taught band at Issaquah Jr. High for several years until the administration got tired of me pestering them about an orchestra program. In the early 1980’s I was given the green light to start a strings program at the fifth grade level, district wide. By adding a grade level each year and gradually adding staff, the program grew. In 1990 the top level orchestra in the high schools became an audition-only group called Evergreen Philharmonic. (They rehearsed every day in their various schools, and then all met together on Fridays after school.)

Because of its beginnings as an all-district program, Evergreen Philharmonic has some features that it shares with very few programs in the country. Members come from all the district high schools, making it an honors program housed within the school district. The orchestra has been the recipient of numerous awards and has performed in Europe and England, as well as Carnegie Hall.

I officially retired in 2018, but I still go to school (Issaquah High) almost every day to help out. Before I retired, we hired Leah Weitzsacker to help with the expanding number of orchestra classes, so when I retired she was already part of the program. I would like to say that it is exceedingly rare to be able to retire and turn over a program that had taken decades to build (my baby!) to such an outstanding successor. Leah brings skills as a conductor, as well as a woodwind and brass player that have profoundly improved the level of the ensemble, and I enjoy every day watching the orchestra grow and thrive under her direction.

DAVID JOHNSON (Percussion Coach) has enjoyed a long and varied career in music and theatre as a performer, manager, director, teaching artist and educator. Originally from upstate New York, he has crisscrossed the United States making music and inspiring students wherever he goes.

Mr. Johnson received a Bachelor of Music Education degree (BME) with an Instrumental emphasis and a Bachelor of Music degree (BM) in Percussion Performance from Ithaca College, a Master of Music degree (MM) with an emphasis in Music Theory and Jazz Pedagogy from Binghamton University and pursued a Doctor of Arts degree (DoA) in Percussion Performance and Jazz Studies at the University of Northern Colorado.

There is not a facet of the performing arts industry in which he has not worked and excelled, and he has a lengthy resume, and a wealth of great stories, both his own and those of his current and former students, to prove it. His greatest satisfactions, however, come from seeing those students, and his own children, achieving success, and changing lives, often through work in the arts.

Currently, “Disney Dave” continues to share the joy of music and theatre with his very young and teenage “musicians” and “artists” as a music specialist in various buildings in the Issaquah, WA school district and as a teaching artist instructor and percussionist with the Village Theatre Kidstage program.

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