Who We Are
Paul Reisler is a composer, songwriter, recording artists, performer and teacher. He’s the founder and artistic director of Kid Pan Alley, co-founder of Trapezoid, as well as his current bands, Paul Reisler & A Thousand Questions featuring Howard Levy, and Three Good Reasons. Over the past 40 years, he’s performed in over 3,000 concerts, recorded close to three-dozen albums, written Aesop’s Fables for Orchestra and Narrator, as well as the script and songs for a new musical entitled Bouncin’. Kid Pan Alley started in 1999 with a brilliant but obvious discovery—kids make the greatest co-writers—especially when you are writing songs for kids.
What We Do
Kid Pan Alley’s mission is to inspire and empower children to work together to become creators of their own music and to rekindle creativity as a core value in education through the group songwriting process. To date, we've written over 2,700 songs with over 40,000 children across the country from Virginia to Hawaii. The songs are a sophisticated and powerful world-view as seen through the eyes of the children. Our songs have been recorded by artists including Amy Grant, Sissy Spacek, Delbert McClinton, Cracker, Kix Brooks, Nashville Chamber Orchestra, Corey Harris, Suzy Bogguss and many others. We’ve won numerous awards including Parents’ Choice Gold Awards, a WAMMIE, and have received a Grammy nomination for our recordings. Other Kid Pan Alley programs include Stand Up and Be Heard, One Little Song Can Change the World, a character development/bullying prevention assembly program focusing on respect — respect for each other, the community, the environment and oneself, featuring songs written by the children. Across the Ages intergenerational Kid Pan Alley program brings the generations together—elders and elementary students sharing life stories and creating original songs based on these stories.
