Tollefson Music was founded by Ross Tollefson. A lifelong music student, he started his education from an early age in the Bethesda area. Ross’s mother, Marcia, first taught him how to play the piano in their home. Ross still remembers playing and singing his favorite songs with his mother. His love for music quickly grew and studied privately with different piano, guitar, and horn teachers in the area. Ross started teaching his own students privately in high school because he wanted to share his love and passion with others.
During his musical studies at Illinois Wesleyan University, he continued to teach privately. Upon graduation, Ross believed that he would work for his family’s swimming business. He spent the next few years working full time with the swimming company, even though he always had music students on the side. As more and more people hired Ross to teach, he decided that his true passion was teaching music. While Ross has been teaching music since 2006, he has been doing so full time since 2017. He is very lucky to be able to put all of his time and energy into his true passion. His dream started with just one student, and has grown to over 70 current students over the past years.
Ross currently still works in the swimming community because he believes that a physical education is just as important as a musical education. Most of his hours are spent teaching music privately in the Bethesda area, and he also teaches a music theory class once per week. Any extra time is spent by giving presentations at different schools, getting as many people excited about music as possible.