Katherine Charlton Calkins teaches in the music department at Mt. San Antonio College where she spent eight years on the all-college general education committee and then served as chair of the music department for the following ten years. During a yearlong sabbatical in 2007-2008 she studied women composers and compiled biographies, recordings, and listening guides, which she made available to her colleagues to help them add more women to their music appreciation and history classes. As a performer, she has a degree in classical guitar from California State University at Fullerton. She toured in Southern France and Tuscany, playing lute with an early music group led by her late, first husband Andrew Charlton and his friend Gloria Ramsey, both well known in the field of early music. Calkins also played percussion and toured in Japan with the CSUF Wind Ensemble. She got her M.A. in music history and has continued with further graduate study in that same field. As a teacher, she started the guitar program at Mt. San Antonio College, where she continues to teach music history, music appreciation, and history of rock music. Her first book, Rock Music Styles: A History, is now out in its ninth edition, published by McGraw Hill Higher Education. Experience Music is her second book.
