Nishimoto Publishing began as a means to distribute a self-published classroom guitar method textbook and curriculum that met both national standards and state specific curriculum for Nevada. It has since broadened to providing a variety resources for the guitar classroom from methods texts, styles supplements, ensemble scores, and so on.
At Nishimoto Publishing, we go beyond the “notes on a page” approaches to music education. While rehearsal, practice, reading, and performance are key foundations for music learning, the true building of a musician occurs with pedagogically sound instruction that utilizes multiple representations, interpretations, and perspectives, and further, challenges the student the consider their own thinking, learning, experience, and possible misconceptions.
All our publications, especially performance scores, include supporting instructional supplements and resources based in best practices in educational instruction. In this way, our students not only learn to play and perform music, but to extend their knowledge and skills into a web of scaffolds leading to the lifelong music learner.
About Matthew Nishimoto
Matthew Nishimoto is the owner a main author of the works available from Nishimoto Publishing. He holds a Ph.D. in Teacher Education, a Master’s degree in Education Administration, and a Bachelor’s degree in Music Education, as well as many educational certifications and teaching endorsements for educational technology, human subjects research, psychology, and American literature.
For over two decades, Dr. Nishimoto was a director of guitar programs in the secondary classroom. His program at Coronado High School (a public school in Henderson, NV) has been recognized by the Guitar Foundation of America (GFA) and the Grammy Foundation. CHS proudly hosted a GFA Regional Symposium in 2015 and 2020 as well as winning 1st Place in the GFA Ensemble Competition for K-12 large guitar ensembles in 2016. In the inaugural NAfME All-National Guitar Ensemble in 2017, Dr. Nishimoto had five students audition, qualify, and perform—more than any other school in the nation. After the pandemic, he started a new program at Sandy Valley School, an extremely rural PK-12 school in a very small community roughly one-hour from the Las Vegas Strip where he taught elementary through high school. For his entire classroom career, his ensembles maintained a perfect record of Superior ratings at every festival and competition appearance.
From 2018 to 2020, Dr. Nishimoto was the Education Coordinator for the Guitar Foundation of America where he collaboratively enacted a new set of visionary goals for the education arm of the non-profit organization. The new initiatives included curating resources for guitar educators, creating a national database of guitar programs, and creating professional development opportunities for guitar educators, as well as advocating and supporting the improvement of performance opportunities for pre-college guitar students. Dr. Nishimoto also curated the authors/articles for the education-centered issues of GFA’s quarterly publication Soundboard. At this time Dr. Nishimoto also sat on the National Guitar Council of the NAfME. A direct result of his work during this time was the creation of All-State Guitar opportunities in states that previously had none.
Dr. Nishimoto’s scholarly pursuits have led him to interesting topics. His research interests include teacher education, teacher induction, educational leadership, music education, and cognitive psychology. Dr. Nishimoto has presented papers multiple times at the AERA conference, the EQRC, the AABSS conference, and the Hawaii International Conference on Education. He also has multiple scholarly papers on education topics published in peer-reviewed journals, practitioner journals, and a book chapter in the Wiley Handbook of Teaching and Learning.
You can read more about Dr. Nishimoto’s philosophy of education in this article “45 Years of Guitar Advocacy with the Guitar Foundation of America”, written by Thomas Amoriello (former chair of the National Guitar Council) and published by the National Association for Music Education.
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