Guitarist, poet, and composer Susan McDonald uses music to educate students of all ages on history, culture, biology and more. Susan is based in Austin and is currently a Touring Artist with Young Audiences of Houston, bringing Arts and Culture Assembly Performances to the area youth.

Susan McDonald has delighted audiences the world over- from the Amazon to Iraq and community concerts to Carnegie Hall. Her audiences have ranged from Holocaust survivors in Vienna to the President of the United States, and her music has been enthusiastically received in concert halls, universities, festivals, schools and hospitals. At her Carnegie Hall debut, the New York Concert Review described her performance as "...one of the most satisfying recitals in recent memory...all the skill and insight that a Bel Canto master brings to a Bellini cadenza...masterful Bach playing..."

A protegee of the legendary Pepe Romero, Susan started playing guitar at the age of six. Her studies took her from the University of St. Thomas in Houston to the Mozarteum in Salzburg and finally to a residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada. Susan's many recordings and live performances have been heard on radio and television broadcasts worldwide.

Becoming known as an exciting composer with recent features in Soundboard and on the internationally syndicated radio program Classical Guitar Alive (her music has been described as "brilliant" by New Classics) , Susan has created an art form which she calls "Animal Ballets," in which she combines her original music and video footage to create sublime live performances in which animals are the "dancers" and she is their "orchestra." Her newest Animal Ballet, Yasuní: Dances from the Rainforest features her music combined with video footage from her travels deep into the Ecuadorian Amazon.

Increasingly, her passion and energy is being directed towards bringing music to people in regions of conflict or isolation. Through her nonprofit organization, Remember the River, she works to support artists in conflict zones through teaching, mentorship and donations of musical instruments and art supplies.

As a passionate advocate of arts in the classroom and with marginalized communities, she works domestically with Young Audiences of Houston and serves as Artistic Director for Fine Arts Foundation. She is Director of Guitar for YES Academies in Iraq and Lebanon and has recently finished serving her fourth term on the Touring Roster of Texas Commission on the Arts and the Mid-America Arts Alliance. Susan McDonald has released ten CDs on the Mayfly label.