Joe Keeney Receives Distinguished Service Award
The Missouri American String Teachers Association named Mr. Joe Keeney, Lee's Summit North and Bernard Campbell Middle School orchestra director and teacher, the 2023 recipient of the Distinguished Service Award. The award is given to a music educator that has made outstanding contributions to support string education in Missouri.
Mr. Keeney has been an orchestra teacher in the Lee’s Summit School District for the last 19 of his 27 years in teaching. For the last 17 years, he has served as the Lee’s Summit North football stadium halftime announcer, worked with the Lee’s Summit North girls cross country team, and the district’s Summer School Elementary Orchestra camp. Mr. Keeney has also worked in the community with Habitat for Humanity, 4-H inner city summer youth camp, and brought string quartets to play for various businesses and retirement homes around town. In 2018 and 2019, Mr. Keeney put on benefit concerts where he raised more than nine thousand dollars for ReDiscover’s youth suicide prevention efforts. In the last year, Mr. Keeney and his orchestra students volunteered time to deliver food to needy families across the Kansas City Metropolitan community.
Mr. Keeney has also served youth musicians across the metro and the country. From 2006-2012, he served as the director of the Youth Kansas city Orchestra Symphonette and was selected to conduct and be a clinician for the Middle Tennessee All-State Orchestra, Liberty Honors Orchestra, Olathe Honors Orchestra, Hickman Mills Honors Orchestra and the University of Wisconsin Summer Honor Orchestra. He has also served on the board of the Missouri Music Educators Association as well as the Kansas Music Educators Association and the Missouri All State Orchestra. He is the recipient of numerous awards for outstanding music educators.
He will receive his award at the Luncheon/Business meeting and Award Ceremony, which will take place at the Tan-Tar-A resort during the Missouri Music Educators Conference later this month.