Meet the Conductors

Lisa Batson

Executive Director & Symphony Conductor

Lisa Batson has gained a reputation as a creative and dynamic orchestra director in the Houston area. She received her Bachelor of Music Education from the Crane School of Music, State University of New York at Potsdam. During her undergraduate study, she coached high school students’ string quartets at the New York State Summer School of the Arts in Saratoga Springs for three years. After completing her degree, she was awarded a full teaching assistantship at Kent State University where she earned a Master’s degree in Music Education with a concentration in string pedagogy.

Mrs. Batson has been teaching in the Houston area, where she has been successful in building programs in the Pasadena, Deer Park, and Clear Creek school districts. Currently, she is the orchestra director at Space Center Intermediate School where she built the program to include approximately 200 students. SCIS has won consecutive UIL sweepstakes, been a finalist in the TMEA Honor Orchestra competition numerous times, and has been invited to perform at the state Capitol in Austin for the “Go Arts Day” in 2009. The Space Center Orchestras recently enjoyed performing a concert along side Mark Wood, the lead violinist of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. She was also a conductor with the Greater Houston Youth Orchestra and currently conducts the Bay Area Youth Symphony. As the founder of “Sizzling Strings Summer Camp” in the Clear Lake area, Ms. Black encourages string students to study jazz and rock styles.

As a teacher, Mrs. Batson has gained membership in TMAA and has been awarded a lifetime membership with the PTA as well as received a faculty merit award from Space Center Intermediate. As a performer, she has done contract work with numerous symphonies and churches. She has also won a $10,000 technology grant along with co-director Jennifer Kidwell for the Space Center Orchestras. In 2008, she was awarded a grant to study “Strings Without Boundaries” for a week in Pittsburgh for teacher training in jazz and rock styles.

Tom Dinardis

Preparatory Conductor

Tom Dinardis is currently in his sixteenth year teaching orchestra in Clear Creek ISD, and has been at Westbrook (formerly Webster) Intermediate since 1998, where the orchestra program has grown from thirty to over two hundred students. In 2010 the Westbrook Chamber Orchestra was named Texas Music Educators Association Middle School Honor Orchestra, and the group performed at the state convention in San Antonio. This group has placed in the top five in this state-wide competition multiple times, and all three performing orchestras at Westbrook consistently receive superior ratings and ‘best in class’ awards at UIL contests and festivals.

A native of Ohio, Tom Dinardis started playing violin in the fourth grade in public school. He was a member of the Baldwin Wallace youth orchestra program for nine years and is the winner of various scholarships and awards including outstanding student teacher of 1995 at Cleveland State University, where he studied violin and viola with Daniel Rains and Stanley Knopka of the Cleveland Orchestra and graduated with a degree in Music Education. He remembers his high school orchestra director having a great influence on his decision to become a teacher, and as a high school student formed a string octet and taught private lessons to district elementary string players in a pilot program.

Mr. Dinardis is an active adjudicator, clinician, arranger, and performer in the area. He is a regular member of the Halcyon Quartet, has been a principal violinist of the Clear Lake Symphony since 2001, and has played with the Galveston Symphony, Pasadena Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Symphony of Southeast Texas. He is an active member of Texas Music Educator’s Association, Texas Orchestra Director’s Association, and has presented sessions at the Texas Association of Gifted and Talented conference and at the Houston Area Suzuki Strings Association chamber music workshop. In 2010 he was named Teacher of the Year at Westbrook Intermediate, and was one of six finalists for this award at the district level. He and his wife Karen have lived in Texas since 1996 and have four children, soon to be the Dinardis Quartet.