KATYA SKANDERA (Katharina Rohwer-Skandera) is a well-known guitarist and music educator throughout New Zealand. She grew up in Lübeck, Germany, in a family of professional classical musicians. Katya studied classical guitar, piano and music education in Germany, England, Canada and USA, holds various music degrees and diplomas (MMus, DipTchg, FTCL, LTCL), and she taught in Germany and Iceland for several years before immigrating to New Zealand. Here she has taught classical guitar, music theory, music history, composition, and music education, in schools, university, workshops, summer schools and master classes (e.g. as director of music at a large high school, and as guitar performance tutor and music education lecturer at the University of Waikato). For over 30 years, she was the president of the Hamilton Classical Guitar Society. At present, Katya works as an independent music professional (teaching, writing, consulting). She lives in a stone house on a hill on the wild West Coast of New Zealand overlooking the South Pacific Ocean, replanting the bare land with native trees, taking her dog Sky for beach walks in the mornings and playing the piano in the evenings.