Published: February 20, 2026 at Freeport | Herald Community Newspapers

The Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame has named Freeport native Edward Norris III its 2025 Educator of Note Award recipient. The honor recognizes Norris’s contributions as a featured performer and music teacher for the past 23 years in various groups and ensembles. He will accept the award at a ceremony on March 20 at the Hall of Fame’s museum in Stony Brook.

According to a statement from the hall, the award honors “exceptional teachers who demonstrate a commitment to music education, play an active role in the community and have a significant impact on the lives of music students of all backgrounds and abilities.” The Educator of Note Award was established in 2007, making Norris the 19th Long Island teacher to be recognized.

“I’ve been doing music my whole life, ever since I was in high school in Freeport,” Norris, 46, a member of the Freeport High class of 1997, said. “All throughout my time growing up I was heavily involved in the music program, and it really became a way of life.”

Norris is currently the director of choral music at Glen Cove High School, where he also teaches standard and Advanced Placement music theory. He has directed the Metropolitan Youth Orchestra’s Nassau Chamber Chorale for the past 20 years. In 2013 he conducted a performance by Glen Cove High’s Select Chorale at the White House for President Barack Obama and other guests, and three years later, on a concert tour of Italy, he led the chorale in serenading Pope Francis at one of the stops.

Norris plays several instruments, including violin and piano, but said he developed a passion for conducting after observing his high school chorus conductor, Stephan Pagano, and learning how moving music could be for performers and listeners alike. He recalls singing in an emotional holiday choral performance at the Freeport Salvation Army in December 1994, when he was a sophomore in high school, and deciding to become a music educator.

“It was such a moving experience that day, I went home and said to my parents, ‘I want to be a high school chorus teacher,’” Norris recounted. “‘I’ll still play my violin, but I need to be in the choir and teaching choir.’ And that was that! I never looked back.”

At Glen Cove High, he said, he is passionate about seeing his music students grow. “I love taking a piece of music, that’s just black and white, just pieces of paper, and making it three-dimensional, making it real, making it come to life,” he explained. “There’s new music that I’m always doing, so the curriculum is different every year. The kids are so hungry and thirsty just to be great, and that fuels me — that pushes me to be my best self.”

Tom Needham, vice chairman of the Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame and the manager of its educational programs, voiced his admiration of Norris’s passion for teaching and mentoring young musicians and vocalists.

“Gold medals, national conferences and international tours tell part of the story,” Needham said, “but Edward Norris’s real legacy lives in the generations of students whose lives he’s transformed through music.”

Next month’s presentation ceremony will include performances by current and former students of Norris’s at Glen Cove High and the Metropolitan Youth Orchestra. Being recognized as the Educator of Note, he said, is “humbling,” adding that he believes he has more to contribute to education and music, and looks forward to whatever might come next.

“My story is not done. My journey is not over,” Norris said. “I have so much more to learn and to give, but [the award] is very humbling. As I said to my students when they found out about this, it’s their reward. The students are the ones that make the music, and I’m just the facilitator.”