Composition & Music Theory Faculty
Clover Nahabedian
Composition & Piano
Clover teaches in person and remote lessons Tuesdays, and Wednesdays.
Clover received a Bachelor of Arts in Music Composition from Hampshire College in 2014, and a Master of Arts in Music Composition from Boston Conservatory in 2018. She has been teaching piano, percussion, and composition since 2012, joined NCMS in 2018, and has been on faculty at the Boston Conservatory High School Composition Intensive since 2021.
She has experience performing and writing in both classical and rock contexts, and particularly enjoys exploring the intersection of multiple genres. She has toured internationally with the bands Dérive and Cheap City, is the executive director of Strange Trace Opera, and runs the independent record label Dollhouse Lightning. She formerly ran the Boston New Music Calendar and was a presenter at 2018’s New Music Gathering. Clover is a contributing writer for I Care If You Listen and conducts the ensemble MCTheprofessor.gov. As a composer, her recent commissions include works for Mazumal, C. Neil Parsons, The Coaxial Arts Gallery, and Histamine Tapes among others. Recent performers of her music include Beth Ratay, Spacepants, Duo Zonda, Jeremy Howell, and Hypercube.
Clover is a trans-woman and uses she/her pronouns. She welcomes students of all ages and abilities, and especially invites students who are gender non-conforming.
Andrew Cote
Composition & Music Theory
Andrew teaches in person and remote lessons on Wednesdays.
A New Hampshire native, Andrew Cote received his B.M. in Music Education from the University of New Hampshire. He went on to obtain a Master's Degree in Music Composition from Central Michigan University and a Doctor of Musical Arts from George Mason University.
As a composer of acoustic and electronic music, Andrew Cote’s compositions have been performed and recorded across three continents. His works have been featured at the Navy Band International Saxophone Symposium, the Midwest International Band and Orchestra Clinic, the World Saxophone Congress, and various other festivals and conferences. Andrew previously taught music composition, orchestration, music technology, and directed the new music ensemble at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA.
He is passionate about serving the community of Nashua through music and showing his students how composition and music theory can help them expand their musicianship and connect to their instruments in new and exciting ways!
Ray Aucoin
Percussion & Composition
Ray teaches live and remote lessons on Mondays and Thursdays.
Ray Aucoin has been a practicing percussionist for over twenty-five years and music educator for twenty. He holds a Master of Music degree in Modern American Music from the Longy School of Music of Bard College and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Music Education from Westfield State University and is a certified music educator for the states of Massachusetts and Colorado. Ray has studied many forms of percussion with some of the world’s greatest educators including drum set with Gary Chaffee and Bob Gullotti, timpani with Alexander Lepak, mallet percussion with Sylvie Zakarian, multi-percussion with Taki Masuko, free improvisation with Joe Morris, and djembe with Famadou Konate and Mamady Keita.
As a performer, Ray has performance experience in a variety of musical genres ranging from rock to reggae - blues to Broadway and all points in between. He is currently music director and drummer for his own Third Stream trio “The Butler Band,” whose arrangements fuse the composed traditions of classical music with jazz improvisation. In addition to his teaching duties at NCMS, Ray also conducts workshops in West African percussion, song, and movement through his own teaching artistry company, “The Faama Dundun Project.”
Here at NCMS, Ray specializes in Rudimental and concert percussion, various ethnic percussion instruments, in addition to his innovative and multi-dimensional drum-set performance curriculum for all ability levels. He is also widely known as “Mr. Trash Talk” by elementary school students in the 21st Century Trash Talk Jr. Program.