
Keri Knecht Grosso
Founder and President of Grosso Music and Fine Arts, Corp
Keri Knecht Grosso is President and Founder of Grosso Music & Fine Arts, Corp. a company that provides musical instruction in piano, voice, violin, cello, guitar, ukulele and Musical Theatre to over 200 students in the Tampa Bay Area, with locations in Lutz and South Tampa. Keri has taught piano for over 30 years and conducted and accompanied for Tampa Bay Children’s Chorus and Lumina Youth Choirs and also accompanied the Florida Boys Choir and Master Chorale of Tampa Bay. She served as harpsichordist for Bay Area Baroque Ensemble from 2019-2024 and has performed two times as a soloist with the Spartanburg Symphony Orchestra. Keri is a graduate of Converse University in Spartanburg, SC.
Keri served as Music Director and Choir Director/Organist and worked in Youth and Children’s Ministries in various churches for 30 years. This led her to begin STEEL, a Homeschool Co-Op that meets as a part of her studio. She is passionate about helping students find and develop their gifts.
Her summers from ’93 to ’97 were spent assisting Charles Wadsworth (Founder of the Lincoln Chamber Music) at Spoleto Festival, USA, and she went on to work with him during the Olympic Chamber Music Concert in Atlanta, GA. She has also worked as the Administrative Director and Cantate Choir Director with the Tampa Bay Children’s Chorus and worked as a Sr. Asset Management Coordinator at GATX Technology for several years before deciding to take the plunge and be a full time musician. Keri, and her husband Tom Grosso have 4 children and currently live in Lutz, FL.
Christina Jimenez
Christina has been teaching voice and beginning piano with Grosso Music & Fine Arts for four years. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Musical Theater from The Boston Conservatory and a Bachelor of Music in Church Music from Furman University in Greenville, SC. She is originally from Tampa but went to New York City to pursue a musical theater career. Her latest accomplishment was performing Off-Broadway as a supporting actress in the musical Molasses in January. She was also a cruise ship stage performer for AIDA Cruises where she rehearsed in Germany and performed in the Canary Islands, Spain, for 9 months. She specializes in musical theater, pop/rock, jazz, and Christian hymns. You can learn more about Christina at www.christinakayjimenez.com, and she posts weekly singing videos on her social media pages @christinakayjimenez.
Rob P. Mitchell
Rob has had a love of music his entire life. He was born into a family of music. Both of his parents were opera singers. He was frequently obsessed with the piano as a child, not taking lessons until a teenager, but picking out music by ear and making up his own arrangements and versions of music he heard from all kinds of sources.
He started taking private violin lessons at age 9, and decided he wanted to become a composer after seeing the movie “Amadeus” at age 14. He took music theory classes, chorus, orchestra in his public high school, and began taking private composition lessons at age 16, eventually attending the Manhattan School of Music Preparatory Division when he was a senior in high school. There he played in the orchestra, sang in the chorus, took theory and keyboard harmony. That same year he had a piece performed by the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.
Rob has been teaching since 2004. Teaching elementary school music and private violin, piano, composition, and guitar. He taught English for two years in Korea. After returning to the US in 2012 has been teaching music at various independent schools in Pinellas and Hillsborough County. He has Level 1 and 2 Orff certifications, and is currently working on a musical/operetta with a local drama colleague, about a local shop in Tampa that was open in the 1990s.
Rob earned a Master of Music from Florida State University and a Bachelor of Music from the Mannes College of Music.
Sophie Mitchell
Sophie Mitchell has been playing the piano for fifteen years and teaching for seven years. She also studied cello with George Alexander, who has played with the Florida Orchestra and the Florida Philharmonic. She has a passion for music and is currently a sophomore studying Contemporary Music at Converse University. In addition to winning 3rd place in the Junior Division of the Justine LeBaron Young Artist Competition for piano, she has performed with the Lumina Youth Choirs throughout the country. In June of 2020, the choir was scheduled to sing for the pope at the Vatican, but the performance had to be canceled due to Covid. However, she had the opportunity to sing with the Florida Orchestra in 2016, 2022, and 2023 and at Carnegie Hall in 2015 and 2023. As a very sought out teacher and freelancer, Sophie has often been asked to play instruments beyond just the piano, such as drums and guitar which she taught herself to play. She is currently accompanying for the Petrie School of Music and playing drums in the band Ded Wed Lock, with plans on releasing an album soon. Sophie loves ballet, classic literature, and obscure British comedy. Her favorite hobbies include baking, reading, and hanging out with her beagle, Lily.
Katie Merritt
Katie Merritt is a 15 year-old high school student who has been playing piano for 8 years now.
In the past two years she has been expanding her musical experience. She joined her church worship band in 2021 and Katie loves to give her talents to the Lord in this way. Recently, under Mrs. Keri Grosso’s guidance, she has had the privilege of learning to share her knowledge with others by teaching piano. She has now been teaching piano for two and a half years. Katie is also the oldest of five kids, and one of her hobbies is dancing with friends and in ballet class!
Micah Jno Baptiste
Micah Jno.Baptiste grew up under the influence of his musically talented older brother. He began playing guitar at the age of 5 but took a better liking to the drums when he started playing them a year later. In Middle School, Micah attended Orange Grove Middle Magnet School, where he became the only 6th grader to be put in the Jazz Band. He moved back and forth between drums and bass guitar during his time in the band and also began forming his own musical projects with peers outside of the classroom setting. In 2017, he began playing drums in his Indie Rock Band, “Charles Irwin.” For the past 2 years, they’ve been performing in and around Florida and released their debut album in the summer of 2019, followed by their first tour up the east coast. He is also a guitarist and vocalist in the Indie Folk two-piece-band, “Bedside Kites,” which came into existence around the same time as his other band and has released 2 short EPs since then.
Keyla Hernandez Rodriguez
Keyla has been playing piano for 14 years. She is from Cuba and studied piano at the Escuela Vocacional de Arte Alfonso Pérez Isaac before immigrating to the United States at the age of 16. She is dual-enrolled at Hillsborough Community College and will graduate from Blake High School in the spring of 2025. She has started her second year of teaching and is currently learning the ukulele and voice. She loves working with children, and she hopes to have her own piano studio one day.