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.
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.
