Paul Reisler (Founder and Artistic Director) is a composer, songwriter, recording artists, performer and teacher. He’s the founder and artistic director of Kid Pan Alley, co-founder of Trapezoid, as well as his current bands, Paul Reisler & A Thousand Questions featuring Howard Levy, and Three Good Reasons. Over the past 45 years, he’s performed in over 3,000 concerts, recorded close to three-dozen albums, co-wrote Aesop’s Fables for Orchestra and Narrator, as well as the script and songs for two musicals Bouncin’ and The Talented Clementine.

Paul has written more songs than the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and Stephen Foster combined—somewhere north of 3,500 compositions.  Certainly, his 65,000 short collaborators as well a handful of Grammy-winning co-writers have helped. Artists including Sissy Spacek, Raul Malo, Darrell Scott, Cracker, Corey Harris, Jesse Winchester and many others have recorded his songs.

He’s one of the most popular songwriting teachers in the country and has taught at workshops and songwriting schools including Rocky Mountain Song School, Utah Song School, New Song Academy, Swannanoa Gathering, Augusta Workshop, Hollyhock, Kerrville, NSAI, Songcamp in the Mountains, Puget Sound Guitar Workshop, Berklee College of Music, University of the Pacific, and Moulin a Nef (France).

Natalia Zukerman (Program Director/Teaching Artist) is a musician, painter and educator who grew up in a very musical family in New York City. The daughter of classical music royalty, Pinchas and Eugenia Zukerman, one could say that music courses through her veins.  She’s released eight albums and has toured internationally as a solo performer since 2005 and performed, opened for and recorded with some of Folk music’s greatest legends including Janis Ian, Holly Near, Tom Paxton, Ani DiFranco, Richard Thompson, Susan Werner.

The New Yorker Magazine said, “Natalia Zukerman’s voice could send an orchid into bloom while her guitar playing can open a beer bottle with its teeth.”

She has toured Africa as a Cultural Diplomat for the US State Department. Her one woman multimedia show, The Women Who Rode Away premiered in 2018. During the pandemic, Natalia co-produced an online music festival that provided immediate financial relief to hundreds of independent musicians at the beginning of the lockdown. She’s been working with KPA as a teaching artist since she met Paul at Rocky Mountain Song School and is thrilled to join the team on a full-time basis.