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More music means a better world.

We believe the only thing standing in the way of someone’s musical aspiration is access to the right teacher. That’s why we’re building the world’s most trusted platform for online music education: To ensure that anyone, anywhere, who aspires to any level of musicianship – or to make a living from teaching it – has the right tools and support to make that dream a reality.

Meet the Team

The Forte team has over 100 years of collective experience in music and education.

We’ve studied, held senior positions, and led major strategic initiatives at institutions such as Juilliard, Berklee College of Music, the Royal College of Music, and The Grammys. We’ve also held key positions at some of the most innovative tech companies in the world, including Magic Leap and Rosetta Stone. Each of us is a musician, as well. While some of us are professionals and others just beginners, we’re all equally passionate about creating a product that brings more music into the world.

Bio +–
Katie lives and breathes arts education, having taught choir, band, strings, guitar, theater, music theory, and more in K-12 music classrooms for over 18 years. She comes to Forte after eight years as the Dean of Education and Community at the Aspen Music Festival and School, one of the most prestigious and innovative music institutions in the world. Katie is an active conductor, singer, and arts administrator, and, as a mom of two, she deeply understands the inherent joys and challenges of raising and teaching musical kids.

Katie Hone Wiltgen

Chief Education Officer

Bio +–
Ashley has spent over 17 years in marketing and development serving organizations in the arts and education sectors, including Alvin Ailey and Stanford. Her main role at Forte is in content creation and management, and she also consults on marketing strategy.

Ashley Pitman

Marketing Strategy Consultant

Bio +–
Ryan has a passion for building intuitive, delightful, powerful tools. He has helped companies create not just industry-leading but category-creating products for more than 17 years before joining Forte’s engineering team. With his entrepreneurial mindset, he enjoys helping music teachers create thriving businesses from their love for music education.

Ryan Walsh

Senior Software Engineer

Bio +–
Matt discovered programming in middle school, where it quickly became a passion. After graduating with a major in Computer Science, he worked at two startups and then co-founded a boutique software development studio where he worked for seven years. At Forte, he uses this experience to define, design, and develop the technical solutions that make the Forte platform run.

Matt Jeanes

Principal Engineer

Bio +–
Hunter started Forte with the dream of empowering more people to become musical. He has experience advancing music through technology at CAA and Magic Leap.

Hunter McGranahan

Co-founder and Chief Product Officer

Bio +–
Will is a product designer turned software engineer. He has been playing music since he was a kid and is unbelievably excited to combine his passions for music and code to help build some awesome music education tools. In his free time he produces music, jams on modular synths and spends too much time making hand-pressed espresso.

Will Justice

Director of Engineering

Bio +–
Liam has over fifteen years of experience both teaching and performing at the highest levels. He is a graduate of Juilliard and performs regularly with The New York Philharmonic and The Metropolitan Opera. His eyes, ears, and ideas are what drive the development of Forte into a tool that musicians love and trust. Check out his website at williamblakeday.com

Liam Day

Artistic and Education Director

Bio +–
Mark is a longtime advisor to some of the world’s top music institutions, including the Royal College of Music, Juilliard, Berklee, and The Grammys. He has led the development of music education programs that have reached over 200,000 students across North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

Mark Murtagh

Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

Bio +–
Dan comes to Forte with a background in music education and arts administration, having taught K-12 music for several years and worked at various institutions, including Berklee and MIT. At Forte, he oversees the daily operations and customer service for the company, and manages Forte's educational programming with institutional partners, like the Royal College of Music, Boston Conservatory at Berklee, and the Curtis.

Dan Fryburg

Director of Operations and Partnerships

Our Story

In early 2020, Mark Murtagh received a call from Hunter McGranahan wanting to catch up on the state of music education. An hour later, Forte was born. Mark was a strategic advisor helping top-tier institutions like Berklee, Juilliard, and the Royal College of Music expand their global reach, and Hunter was building a tech startup’s music education platform offering a more impactful learning experience. Together, these two non-musicians leveraged their deep industry experience and passion for greater educational access to create a first-of-its-kind online music education platform.

Covid-19 shut down music venues and made in-person meetings impossible, silencing many of the world’s musicians. Performing income disappeared, and teaching income became reliant on lessons conducted via video tools built for business meetings. Struggling to hear their students’ instrumentation through these platforms left teachers without a way to deliver high-quality instruction online. So, Forte got to work on a solution. They consulted leadership at the world’s top music schools, as well as independent music teachers around the world, to understand exactly what was needed to help them sustain their educational missions — and then they built it.

The first step was to build a platform with radically better audio, purpose-built for playing and listening to music. This entailed growing the team to include a virtuoso that could hear all the musical nuances that Mark and Hunter could not. They brought on Liam Day, a performer in the New York Philharmonic and Juilliard alumnus, as Forte’s Artistic and Educational Director, to rigorously test and fine-tune their advanced audio software. They then began testing it in pilot programs with The Curtis Institute, Royal College of Music, and Berklee College of Music, with a belief that if it could work for those demanding institutions, it could work for everyone. Six months later, with excellent feedback from their conservatory partners, they began rolling Forte out to musicians worldwide.

As our team continues to grow, so does our usership. Today, Forte is being used by thousands of musicians across the globe, and continues to innovate in partnership with the most esteemed names in music. Have thoughts about what we’re up to, where we’re headed, or how you can get involved?

We’d love to hear from you.

The idea

In early 2020, Mark Murtagh received a call from Hunter McGranahan wanting to catch up on the state of music education. An hour later, Forte was born. Mark was a strategic advisor helping top-tier institutions like Berklee, Juilliard, and the Royal College of Music expand their global reach, and Hunter was building a tech startup’s music education platform offering a more impactful learning experience. Together, these two non-musicians leveraged their deep industry experience and passion for greater educational access to create a first-of-its-kind online music education platform.

The problem

Covid-19 shut down music venues and made in-person meetings impossible, silencing many of the world’s musicians. Performing income disappeared, and teaching income became reliant on lessons conducted via video tools built for business meetings. Struggling to hear their students’ instrumentation through these platforms left teachers without a way to deliver high-quality instruction online. So, Forte got to work on a solution. They consulted leadership at the world’s top music schools, as well as independent music teachers around the world, to understand exactly what was needed to help them sustain their educational missions — and then they built it.

The solution

The first step was to build a platform with radically better audio, purpose-built for playing and listening to music. This entailed growing the team to include a virtuoso that could hear all the musical nuances that Mark and Hunter could not. They brought on Liam Day, a performer in the New York Philharmonic and Juilliard alumnus, as Forte’s Artistic and Educational Director, to rigorously test and fine-tune their advanced audio software. They then began testing it in pilot programs with The Curtis Institute, Royal College of Music, and Berklee College of Music, with a belief that if it could work for those demanding institutions, it could work for everyone. Six months later, with excellent feedback from their conservatory partners, they began rolling Forte out to musicians worldwide.

The future

As our team continues to grow, so does our usership. Today, Forte is being used by thousands of musicians across the globe, and continues to innovate in partnership with the most esteemed names in music. Have thoughts about what we’re up to, where we’re headed, or how you can get involved?
We’d love to hear from you.
Coming Soon
on Forte