Maureen Roen Percussion

Growing up in Wisconsin, Maureen Roen’s musical training began at home, where her mother punctuated family life with impressive interludes at the piano and organ, her father — an Irish tenor and pitch-perfect whistler — gave kitchen serenades to his wife and seven children. They sang in the car, at extended family gatherings, and “followed the bouncing ball” on television with  Mitch Miller and his orchestra, building knowledge of the Great American Songbook.

While piano lessons in fifth grade laid the groundwork for further music study, it was the spine-tingling cadences of the high school band that drew her to start playing percussion at age 11.  

A resident of Tempe since 1995 where she has worked as a freelance writer and editor and director of a college marketing and communications team at Arizona State University, Maureen has appreciated the tremendous opportunities for musical expression in the Valley of the Sun.

In addition to playing percussion with the Chandler Symphony Orchestra for more than a decade (serving as Principal Percussionist since 2018), she has been a percussionist and section leader in the Ahwatukee Foothills Concert Band since 2000, is timpanist and percussionist with the Women's Orchestra of Arizona, a percussionist for choir cantatas in Sun Lakes and Fountain Hills and is a gigging drummer with The Hot Beignets, playing the upbeat and soulful traditional-style jazz of New Orleans and Chicago.