AHS music teacher brings home a Grammy

“It was a whirlwind,” says Annandale High School orchestra director Annie Ray of her time in Los Angeles at the Grammys to accept the 2024 Music Educator of the Year Award.

“It was unbelievable. It was so cool to see what goes on behind the scenes,” Ray told Annandale Today.

She met a slew of other Grammy winners and celebrities, including Taylor Swift, Ice Cube, Billie Eilish, SZA, and Oprah Winfrey, with whom she had a long conversation, and many more.

The interaction with Taylor Swift was brief. “She said, ‘oh my gosh, this is so exciting’ and gave me a hug,” Ray recalls. Swift was closely protected by her handlers the whole night.

It was a special honor to meet Meryl Streep, Ray says, because she talked about how her music teacher was such a big inspiration.

The Music Educator Grammy Award was presented at the Recording Academy’s Special Merit Awards Ceremony on Feb. 3. The award honors educators who made a significant contribution and demonstrated a commitment to music education. Watch Ray’s red-carpet interview at the MusiCares Grammy event here.

Ray was honored for creating opportunities for making music accessible to all students. She launched the Crescendo Orchestra for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities and the FCPS Parent Orchestra.

Related story: Annandale teacher Annie Ray wins a Grammy

“Surprisingly, I wasn’t nervous” when accepting the award, Ray says. “When you talk about something you’re passionate about, it’s easy to talk about it.”

At the Special Merit Awards gala, Ray connected with the Somalian rapper and singer K’naan whose song “Refugee” won the award for Best Song for Social Change. “We bonded because so many students at Annandale are refugees.”

During the Grammy nomination process, Ray was pregnant with her second child and extremely sick with recurring infections. “I was pretty much out of commission, so the students really took the reins in telling our story.” The sister of a student made a video that was shown during the Grammy Special Merit Awards ceremony.

Ray’s Grammy award comes with a $10,000 prize and a matching grant for Annandale High School, which she plans to use for new cellos for the orchestra and to help finance student field trips.

Now that she is back at Annandale High School, Ray says, “my students are all so supportive, so kind. They want to make sure I’m taking care of myself.”

“This is your award. You are part of something special,” she told them. “They’re sitting up a little taller. There is so much pride.”

Earlier this year, she invited the composer Katie O’Hara LaBrie to compose a piece of music for strings live with contributions from her students. The community will be able to hear the piece at a concert at Annandale on May 16.

“Going back to school is so comforting in a lot of ways. I love what I do. Nothing has really changed,” she says. But now that she has a national platform, “there’s an interesting dichotomy. I want to share the Annandale story.” She has some ideas but is not ready to announce anything.