About Us
Meet Our Director
Sharing a passion for music
Every week, I strive to create opportunities for expression and learning by establishing a positive, upbeat, and engaging environment where students feel comfortable and confident. We have amazing students who are enthusiastic and delightful to work with. A music educator is to celebrate not only the performance, but the process, and that is my goal.
As we have grown, the Lord has brought other music & theater teachers and administrators who share my passion for the fine arts and the homeschooling community. So thankful for our Troubadours family!
~ Cathy LaFrombois
Cathy LaFrombois
Founder/Executive Director of Valley Troubadours, LLC (est. 2013) · Director of Bands & Choirs
Cathy LaFrombois is a music educator, conductor and oboist in Appleton, Wisconsin. She is the founder and executive director of the Valley Troubadours Homeschool Music & Theater Program, where she also serves as Director of Bands & Choirs, and the founder and executive director of the National Association of Homeschool Music Educators (NAHME).
LaFrombois holds degrees in music education and performance from the DePaul University School of Music in Chicago and is completing a Master of Music in Music Education at Boston University, where her work focuses on curriculum development for community-based music programs. She has taught music for more than thirty years, beginning as a band and choir director in K-12 schools in Illinois, Wisconsin and North Carolina. Her ensembles have consistently earned Division I ratings at Wisconsin School Music Association festivals, along with state-level Exemplary Performance Awards, and she has been honored as a Teacher of the Year.
She founded Valley Troubadours in 2013 to give homeschooled students the same rich ensemble experiences she had led in conventional schools. It began with two band classes, two choir classes and a borrowed room. Today it serves nearly 800 students, with about 1,500 class registrations across some 50 music, theater and performing arts classes for students from kindergarten through adulthood. In 2023 the organization purchased a 24,000-square-foot facility, which also hosts homeschool co-ops, community ensembles and concerts. In June 2026, she led the Troubadours’ Trouvères vocal ensemble and Front Line Jazz ensemble on a concert tour of Puerto Rico.
In 2026, LaFrombois founded NAHME to connect homeschool families with bands, choirs and orchestras near them and to support the directors who lead them. NAHME’s National Registry now lists more than 120 homeschool ensembles in 36 states. Her current work asks what music education outside the conventional school system can teach the wider profession about access, rigor, community and belonging. Her essay “What Homeschool Families Are Teaching Us About Community Music Education” appears on the National Association for Music Education (NAfME) blog.
She has played oboe and English horn with the Green Bay, Fox Valley and Oshkosh Symphonies, as well as the Piedmont Wind Ensemble. She has performed vocally with the NewVoices Choir and the Badger State Women’s Choir. She is a member of NAfME, the Wisconsin Music Educators Association, the American Choral Directors Association, the Wisconsin Choral Directors Association, the National Band Association and the Wisconsin Concert Band Association. She and her husband have homeschooled their four children for 20 years.
Thank you for being a part of this incredible Troubadours community!
