Adjunct Instructor Biographies
Patricia Arntz, Elementary Music
Patricia Arntz has been an online adjunct faculty member of the SMSU Music Department since 2019. She graduated from Hamline University, St. Paul, Minnesota with a degree in music performance, earned an additional undergraduate music degree from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa and completed a Master’s Degree in Education at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota. She is certified in the Orff Method of music education and has taken extensive classes in various music specialties throughout her career. Most of that career was spent as an elementary music specialist in the Twin Cities area. After retiring from the music classroom, she began to share her teaching experience with Elementary Ed students at SMSU. Her primary focus is to guide SMSU students with integrating music and core subjects such as science, language arts, social studies, math, art and PE.
In addition to teaching, she continues her musical experiences as a pianist, accompanist and organist for Twin Cities organizations and churches. She has composed and published choral works for children, women, men and SATB choirs. During her time as a music specialist, she directed a District-wide Honors Choir for several years and most recently was selected by the American Choral Director’s Association to direct the 4th, 5th and 6th grade Polaris Honor Choir in March 2025. For the concert season of 2024-2025, she designed curriculum for the Minnesota Orchestra's Young People's Concerts where she included core subjects such as Social Studies, Science, Language Arts and Math as they related to the music the students would hear when attending the concerts. She will continue to write curriculum for the 2025-2026 season as well. Patricia thoroughly enjoys bringing the concept of music into the elementary general education classroom!
Dr. Peter Lothringer, Composition & Guitar
Dr. Peter Lothringer teaches composition, and guitar at Southwest Minnesota State University. He holds Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees in music theory and composition from Western Illinois University, and a Doctor of Musical Arts in composition from the University of Arizona. Lothringer's compositions include works for orchestra, chorus, chamber ensemble, and solo instruments, as well as music for two documentary films. His orchestral music has been performed by the Southwest Minnesota Orchestra, the Western Illinois University Symphony Orchestra, and the Orchestra de Camera Ripieno (Panama City, Panama). His music has also been featured on the Minnesota Orchestra's Perfect Pitch New Music Reading Session and the Plymouth Music Series' Orchestral Reading Project.
In 2007 Lothringer composed A New Time to Sing for SATB choir and brass octet, a fanfare commissioned by the Choirs of Note Choral Festival. The work was premiered in Marshall, Minnesota under the direction of Dale Warland. In 2008 Lothringer recorded and released Fingerstyle Forms, a CD featuring his compositions for solo guitar.
Dr. Lothringer performs regularly in a jazz duo with saxophonist/clarinetist Ross Anderson, and plays guitar on Anderson's CD, Jazz Time (2013)
Wes Myers, Bass
R. Wes Myers teaches applied bass lessons (both double bass and electric). He is also the middle and high school orchestra director for the Marshall Public Schools. He has taught a number of elective music activities such as 9th grade jazz band, show choir backup band, and is the assistant marching band director.
He is heavily involved in music in the local community including directing the pit band for the Marshall Area Stage Company production of the Sound of Music in 2009, playing in the Marshall Municipal Band, and the Route 68 Big Band. He is involved with many First Lutheran Church music ensembles.
Mr. Myers holds a Masters degree in Music Education from the University of Florida as well as a Bachelor of Science in Music Education from Bethel University where he was involved in the Jazz Band, Concert Band, Symphony Orchestra, and Chamber Orchestra. He recently spoke at the Minnesota Music Educators Association Midwinter Inservice on adapting class guitar instruction for English Language Learners.
Samson Obel, Cello
Samson Obel started his music journey at the age of six and has been participating in classical performance ever since. He has been a life long student of music obtaining a degree in cello performance from Peabody Conservatory. While he enjoys performing all styles of classical music, his lifelong favorite remains chamber music.
Samson gives private lessons as well as serves as an adjunct professor at SMSU.
He currently performs with the Southwest Minnesota Orchestra, individually and with small collaborations at local events. When not performing music, Samson enjoys spending time with his wife and twin daughters.
Hannah Overbey, Voice
Hannah Overbey teaches Applied Voice at Southwest Minnesota State University. Originally from Leavenworth, Kansas, she started her musical journey as a clarinetist before seeing her first opera and “getting hooked” on the art form and wanting to learn everything about vocal production.
Currently based in Fargo, ND, she stays busy as a private studio teacher and musical director. Overbey is passionate about demystifying the voice and how it works, as well helping young performers see themselves as belonging in the classical voice space.
Beyond teaching, Overbey is an active performer, appearing with the Fargo-Moorhead Opera, Stage West, Badlands Opera Project, and Act Up Theatre. Roles include Belinda and 1st Witch (Dido and Aeneas) Barbarina (Le nozze di Figaro) and Lucy (The Telephone). Hannah Overbey holds degrees in Music Education (Pittsburg State University) and Vocal Performance (North Dakota State University), and is a member of the National Association of Teachers of Singing and Sigma Alpha Iota Music Fraternity.
Dr. James Tabaka, Music & Guitar
Dr. James Tabaka is a musicologist and classical guitarist and has been an Instructor of Music at Southwest Minnesota State University since 2008 where he has taught World Music, Popular Music, Music History, American Music, Introduction to Music, and Applied Guitar.
Dr. Tabaka holds a Ph D. in Musicology from the University of Auckland in New Zealand, a Master’s degree in Music History from the University of New Hampshire and a Bachelor of Music degree from Minnesota State University, Mankato. His musicological interests range from art and film music to pop and rock. Dr. Tabaka’s dissertation presented the first extensive study concerning the cultivation of string trios by composers, critics, listeners, performers, and publishers during Beethoven’s tenure in Vienna. His research highlights the interaction of these parties' which were central to defining the unique cultures of chamber music arising at this time. Through his research, Dr. Tabaka has gained fresh insights into publishing and marketing, performance venues and practices, review culture, listening theories and practices, and composition in Vienna during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Lately, his research has focused on parodistic tendencies in the works of Erik Satie.
He is the recipient of various awards including a Marsden Grant Doctoral Scholarship in Musicology from the University of Auckland, a Fellowship from the University of New Hampshire to fund research regarding problems of authenticity and attribution in the guitar works of François Dufaut (1604-1672). He was also awarded a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board for the reproduction of a Nineteenth-Century guitar.
Dr. Tabaka is an active member of the American Musicological Society, the American Beethoven Society, and The Society for Eighteenth-Century Music.
Lon Wright, Clarinet, Saxophone, Oboe, & Bassoon
Lon attended Augustana College and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Music Education in 1969. During his college career he was active in performing on clarinet and saxophones. From 1966 to 1970 he performed with the Sioux Falls Municipal Band and worked part time at a local music store as an instrument technician. He also performed in the Augustana College Concert Band and the Northlanders Jazz Band.
After eight years of directing school bands, he began a career in music business. In 1985 he started his own music business which specialized in musical instrument sales and repair.
From 1985 to present time he has been principal clarinet with the Marshall Municipal Band, clarinetist with the “Disciples of Dixie” Dixieland band, performed on saxophone and clarinet in the Route 68 Big Band, and played clarinet and bassoon in the Southwest Minnesota Orchestra. He performs as a woodwind player in Marshall’s annual summer musical theater production.
He has been an adjunct member of the SMSU music faculty as woodwind instructor since 1989.
Last Modified: 7/30/25 1:57 PM | Website Feedback