Joan LaRue holds a B.S. degree in Music Education from The Ohio State University and a M.M. degree in Trumpet Performance from the University of Southern California. She receive d a Rockefeller Grant to attend Oberlin Conservatory for two summers and was a performer in a Cichowicz Master Class. She has played principal trumpet in the Long Beach Symphony, Long Beach Ballet, Long Beach Opera, the South Coast Symphony, Westside Symphony, Redlands Bowl Orchestra, Peninsula Symphony, and has soloed with the Long Beach Bach Festival on piccolo and Baroque Trumpets.

Miss LaRue has attended and participated in many Baroque Trumpet workshops including Ed Tarr, and the Amherst Early Music Festival. She was the lecturer on Natural Trumpet and Soloist at the California State University Baroque Music Festival. She has also performed with Musica Angelica and as a soloist on Baroque Trumpet with several local orchestras as well as playing principal Baroque trumpet in the San Louis Obispo Mozart Festival, the Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra, and the Whittier Camerata Orchestra.

After teaching instrumental music in the public schools for many years Miss LaRue maintains a full private trumpet studio with many former students enjoying successful professional music careers, teaching Brass Methods and Trumpet at CSULB, coaching public school brass sections, being an active free-lance musician in the Los Angeles and Orange Counties as well as being an adjudicator and clinician for the Southern California School Band and Orchestra Association.

Joan has studied with John Clyman, James Stamp, Harry Hurforth, and Kermit Simmons.