Matthay Festival 2016
Pennsylvania State University
Recitalists and Presenters
is
Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of South Carolina
School of Music. He attended the University of Kansas City, Yale
University, and the Royal Academy of Music, London. His teachers include
Carl Friedberg,
Bruce Simonds, Hilda Dederich and Frank Mannheimer.
Professor Adams has performed at many Matthay Festivals, starting in
1966. His performance venues include Weill Recital Hall, the National
Gallery, Wigmore
Hall, London, and the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam. He enjoyed a long
association with the United States Information Services, presenting over
150 concerts in
South America, Europe, and the Far East. For many years he also
presented radio series for the South Carolina Educational Network and
gave presentations for
the South Carolina Humanities Council. At USC he was awarded a Venture
Fund grant to perform the complete piano music of Debussy in five
recitals. He also
documented the life of Debussy in three articles for the Piano Quarterly.
Professor Adams was awarded a Certificate of Merit from Yale University
in 2000,and received the Mungo Award for Distinguished Teaching from the
University
of South Carolina in 1998. On retirement, he created an endowment for
French music at the Thomas Cooper Library, giving as the first gift one
of only 250
copies of the first edition of “Monsieur Croche-antidilettante” by
Claude Debussy.
Since retiring in 2004, Adams has continued to perform and give
masterclasses, notably at the Varna International Masterclass in Varna,
Bulgaria, and for
the European Music Teachers Association in Novi Sad, Serbia. He is a
member of the Royal Over Seas League in London, and teaches each summer
for the
Southeastern Piano Festival in Columbia, South Carolina.
John Kenneth Adams first drew critic's attention with a series of recitals in Washington, D.C., including the National Gallery of Art, the Phillips Collection and the Maryland Piano Festival. Critic Paul Hume noted in the Washington Post his performance of Schumann's Carnaval, “played with a deep-in-the-keys tone and and fine fluency."
A later performance at the Maryland Festival drew raves from the Washington Post:
“Everything he does reveals an artist who thinks and feels for himself.”
In 2012 he was awarded a Certificate of Appreciation from the State of South Carolina by Governor Nikki Haley. On September 19, 2015, at a ceremony held at the Rice Music House in Columbia, South Carolina, Professor Adams was officially inducted as a Steinway Artist.
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are known for their adrenalized performances, original compositions, and notorious music videos. Mr. Anderson and Ms. Roe met in 2000 as freshmen at The Juilliard School and formed their
dynamic musical partnership shortly thereafter. They have since toured extensively, with notable
recitals in Beijing, Seoul, Singapore, Italy, Vancouver, and most major US cities, as well as in nearly
every New York City venue imaginable, from Carnegie Hall to children’s hospitals. Together they
have appeared on MTV’s Total Request Live, NPR’s All Things Considered and From the Top, APM’s
Performance Today, the Cliburn Concert Series, the Gilmore and the Gina Bachauer International
Piano Festivals, and dozens of summer chamber music festivals. Their orchestral engagements
include performances with the Calgary, Hartford, Santa Fe, and Winnipeg Symphony Orchestras,
among others, and with members of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. In recognition of their
singular vision for the advancement of classical music, they have been invited to present at
numerous international leader symposiums, including EG (Entertainment Gathering), the Imagine
Solutions Conference, Chicago Ideas Week, and Mexico’s Think Tank Festival for Brilliant Minds.
Their scores are published by Alfred Music on the “Anderson & Roe Duos & Duets Series” and by
Awkward Fermata Press.
Mr. Anderson and Ms. Roe left an indelible impression at The Juilliard School, where they both
earned their bachelor’s and master’s degrees. A live performance by the Anderson & Roe Piano
Duo was handpicked to appear on the Sounds of Juilliard CD celebrating the school’s centenary.
In 2006, given only two months to compose and prepare, they gave the world premiere of their
own composition Star Wars Fantasy: Four Impressions for Two Pianos, replacing John Williams
on Juilliard’s “Cinema Serenades” concert in Alice Tully Hall. Additionally, the two directed the
groundbreaking project “Life Between the Keys,” an event that involved the entire Juilliard Piano
Class of 2004; this performance project celebrated the class’s unique camaraderie and chronicled
its Juilliard experience in an all-American program of piano music.
Anderson & Roe believe strongly in the communicative potential of music, and their performances,
compositions, websites, videos, recordings, and writings all serve this mission, bringing joy to
people around the world. As the
Northwest Reverb
recently stated, “[Anderson & Roe] swept the
audience into a cheering mass of humanity, making a strong case that playing piano is the most fun
thing that two people could ever do together.”
GREG ANDERSON won the Clara Wells Scholarship Auditions in 2000, and has performed at previous Matthay Festivals. His earlier teachers included Kim Craig and Aiko Onishi. He received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at Juilliard as a student of Julian Martin, and his DMA from Yale as a student of Peter Frankl.
ELIZABETH JOY ROE grew up in the Chicago area, where her prominent teachers included Emilio del Rosario, Vladimir Leyetchkiss, and Theodore Edel. She earned both her Bachelor's and Master's degrees at Juilliard, where she studied with Yoheved Kaplinsky.
Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Joy Roe are Steinway Artists. Their website is
http://www.andersonroe.com/
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is an internationally recognized piano scholar, who
has done much to expand our modern understanding of historic pianism, and
especially of the nineteenth century. In 1965, he co-founded the International Piano Archives in
Cleveland, and its headquarters were soon moved to New York, where it developed a
substantial archive of early recordings, many of which were reissued in modern format. He
donated the organization’s holdings to the University of Maryland in 1977. He is credited with
discovering and publishing all known recordings of Josef Hofmann,
and reintroducing pianist
Ervin Nyiregyházi
to modern audiences. For a number of years, he has been
preparing a
comprehensive, scholarly biography of Hofmann, and most recently, with Edward Blickstein, he
co-authored an extensive, scholarly study of
Vladimir de Pachmann, Chopin’s Prophet (Scarecrow, 2013), which has been very well received.
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Nigel Coxe
is a Jamaican-born, British-trained pianist
living in the U. S. A Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music in
London, where he studied with Harold Craxton, he has also served as a professor at the Academy.
He is currently professor of music at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and he combines
his teaching with an active schedule of recitals and lecturing. He has performed
widely in Europe, Great Britain, and America. He has appeared as soloist with the London Philharmonic,
the London Symphony, the Hallé Orchestra, and many others. He has also given recitals for the
Australian Broadcasting Commission in Sydney and has made numerous solo and concerto
appearances for the BBC London. The New York Times has written, "He goes to the heart of
his music in modestly straightforward fashion, leading from expressive strength and shunning any
sort of virtuoso exaggerations." The Times (London) has called him "a musician's pianist to the core."
Mr. Coxe has made two very well-received CDs, both available on the Titanic label:
Music of Percy Grainger and Showstoppers, a disc featuring the music of Gershwin, Grainger, and
Eubie Blake. Both have received worldwide critical acclaim. Recently he was also a member of the
International Jury for the Concours de Musique du Canada in Montreal.
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Nancy Hill Elton
began her musical studies with piano lessons from her mother. She holds the Doctorate of Musical Arts degree in both piano and vocal performance from the University of Texas. She earned her undergraduate degree at the University of South Carolina where she was the recipient of numerous awards and scholarships, including the school’s highest honor, the Music Achievement Award. There she studied piano with John Kenneth Adams and voice with Evelyn McGarrity. At the University of Texas, she studied piano with John Perry and voice with Glenda Maurice and Bethany Beardslee. Additional piano study was with Frank Mannheimer for three summers in Duluth, Minnesota. She also attended the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California, where she studied piano with Jerome Lowenthal and accompanying and chamber music with Gwendolyn Koldolfsky.
A versatile performer, Nancy has fashioned a dual career in piano and in voice. She has received critical acclaim as a piano concerto soloist and as solo recitalist, and has performed throughout the South and many other areas of the US. She has an extensive solo repertoire, but has also performed as a collaborative artist with many instrumentalists and singers over the years. Concerto performances have included Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto and Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganni, Grieg's Piano Concerto, and Beethoven's Choral Fantasy for the Musica Sacra Concert Series at First Presbyterian Church of Atlanta and again recently with the Buckhead Youth Orchestra. Nancy’s past presentations for the Matthay Festival have included solo recitals at Kennesaw State University and at the University of Kansas, and lecture recitals on Schumann’s Carnaval, and the Elliot Carter Piano Sonata.
A lyric soprano, Nancy has sung many leading operatic roles as well as art song recitals, and has accumulated an extensive oratorio repertoire. While she lived in Texas, she was sought by local composers for her pure tone and perfect pitch. She sang several premiers of songs by Kathryn Mischell and Priscilla Mclean. She is soprano soloist on a CD entitled Songs for Adults and Other Children (Capstone Records) by Priscilla McLean. A highlight of her vocal study was the honor of being selected through national taped auditions to study with famed soprano Elizabeth Schwarzkopf and Walter Legge in a German Lieder Summer Workshop in Thunder Bay, Canada. She was also soprano soloist with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra for a Youth Concert, singing the famous aria “Una voce poco fa” under the direction of William Fred Scot. Nancy sang as soprano soloist with the Musica Sacra Concert Series of Atlanta for 12 years, She sang the leading role in Bizet’s youthful opera, Dr. Miracle, for an entire season with the Atlanta Opera Outreach Program throughout the city schools of Atlanta. Her most recent performances have included singing Liszt’s Three Songs from William Tell at the American Liszt Society Conference last year at the University of Oregon. Nancy has also branched out into singing the great standard jazz songs of the early twentieth century in retirement homes and other venues. She will present next fall at the GMTA conference with Georgia’s jazz pianist legend, Geoffrey Haydn of Georgia State University, singing songs of Gershwin, Kern, Carmichael, Arlen and many others.
In addition to her large private studio, Nancy has held teaching positions at Georgia State University, Clayton State College and the University of West Georgia. She was recently invited to join the piano faculty of the University of Georgia where she teaches applied piano primarily to piano majors. Nancy is active as an adjudicator and clinician for many piano festivals and professional organizations throughout the Southeast and is Past-President of Atlanta Music Teachers Association. In 2005 she received the Georgia Music Teachers Association Teacher of the Year Award.
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has taught privately
and performed in the Dayton, Ohio, area for more than fifty years. He studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music,
the University of Dayton, and the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati. His piano
studies were with Ada Clyde Gallagher, Beryl Rubinstein, Frances Bolton Kortheuer, and Madeline Bostian Rider,
a pupil of Tobias Matthay. He served as a member of the piano faculty at Wright State University from 1976-83,
and for seventeen years was Director of Concerts for the Dayton Art Institute. For 40 years, he was also the Founder/Director of
the Soirées Musicales International Piano Series, which which presented major artists from all over the world.. He is a past President and
presently, Archivist, of the American Matthay Association, and since 1963, has appeared every year but one as a
recitalist and/or lecturer at the annual Matthay Festivals held throughout the United States and in Canada. In
2004 he was awarded the organization's First Annual Distinguished Service Award. In 1999 he appeared as soloist
with Dayton's Miami Valley Symphony Orchestra in performances of the Tchaikovsky G Major Concerto, and
subsequently in performances of the Mozart Concerto, K. 467, and Chopin's Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise
Brilliante. He also performed the Dohnanyi Variations on a Nursery Theme and Liszt's Totentanz,
playing a 1913 Erard
Concert Grand which he has restored.
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is the current Past-President of the American Matthay Association for Piano. A former editor
of the Matthay News, McRoberts wrote an article about Matthay for Clavíer Companion, and gave a presentation on Matthay principles for the national conference
of Music Teachers National Association. He has served Tennessee Music Teachers Association as president and editor of Tennessee Music Teacher, contributed reviews
of new music for Piano Guild Notes, and currently is president of
the Southern Chapter of the College Music Society. He is University
Professor of Music at Union
University in Jackson, Tennessee, where he teaches private piano and
related courses, and is coordinator of keyboard studies and of concerts
and recitals.
A former governor of Province 15 for Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, he is
faculty advisor to the Iota Sigma Chapter. He performs frequently as a
soloist and a
collaborative musician and with the Jackson Symphony Orchestra. He has
made numerous presentations for the American Matthay Association for
Piano, the
Southern Chapter of the College Music Society, and various music teacher
groups, as well as in China, Japan, Brazil, and Haiti. A church
organist for
over twenty-five years, he currently plays at First United Methodist
Church in Jackson, Tennessee.
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is the current President of the American Matthay Association for Piano. She
has performed as soloist, chamber musician, orchestral keyboardist, and
accompanist in the United States, Mexico, and England. She made her
London solo debut at the prestigious Wigmore Hall in 1984, and she has
appeared as a soloist with the Phoenix Symphony, and the Amarillo and
Lubbock Symphonies. For many years she served as Keyboardist for the
Phoenix Symphony Orchestra and Principal Keyboardist for the Sun Cities
Symphony. She has also served as Keyboardist for The Florida Orchestra
in Tampa. She is a member of many chamber ensembles, including the Bel
Canto Players, and frequently performs with singers. Her summer festival
appearances include the Sedona Chamber Music Festival, the New
Hampshire Music Festival, and the Park City International Chamber Music
Festival. She began to play the piano before she was three years old,
studying with her father, Samuel Pendleton, a student of Tobias Matthay.
At the age of five, she was the youngest performer ever to participate
in the Berkeley (California) Bach Festival, and she later was a prize
winner in the Chicago Young Artists Competition. She graduated as
Salutatorian from Interlochen Arts Academy, and completed Bachelor and
Master of Music degrees at Texas Tech University. She studied in England
with Denise Lassimonne, Martino Tirimo and Gwenneth Pryor, completing
graduate diplomas at the Royal College of Music and the Royal Academy of
Music. She holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Arizona State
University. She has taught at Texas Tech University, Arizona State
University, and in the Maricopa County (AZ) Community Colleges. She is
married to Warren Hoffer, a retired professor of voice at ASU, with whom
she often performs.
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Janice Larson Razaq
is the current Vice-President of the American Matthay Association. She holds a doctorate from Texas Tech University and additional degrees from the Eastman School of Music and the University of Illinois. Her Matthay-trained teachers include Frank Mannheimer and
Cécile Genhart. A Fulbright scholar in England, she performed at Wigmore Hall in London, where she received excellent reviews. She was an award winner in the Maria Canals International Competition in Barcelona. Dr. Razaq is heard on WFMT and Minnesota Public Radio and plays concertos with regional orchestras. Solo performances range across the country. Her recent performances/presentations in the summer of 2013 included an appearance at the Canadian Federation of Music Teachers Association National Conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Dr. Razaq is active in the Illinois State Music Teachers Association, where she has been Certification Chair, and is currently State President. She is Director of Keyboard Studies at William Rainey Harper College in Palatine where she teaches applied piano, non-credit piano, class piano and piano ensemble. She often presents lecture recitals on various topics for area music teachers groups and is in demand for judging auditions and competitions.
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has been praised by the Washington Post as a pianist who "simply reaches right into the heart of whatever she is playing—and creates music so powerful you cannot tear yourself away." From her first recordings with Kapp Records, and her highly acclaimed Carnegie Hall recital debut as an artist on the Sol Hurok roster, Ann Schein's amazing career has earned her high praise in major American and European cities and in more than 50 countries around the world. Since her debut in Mexico City in 1957 when she performed both the Rachmaninoff 3rd Concerto and the Tchaikovsky B-flat Concerto, she has performed thousands of concerts on every continent. She has performed with conductors including George Szell, James Levine, Seiji Ozawa, James dePreist, David Zinman, Stanislaw Skrowacewski, and Sir Colin Davis, and with major orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Baltimore Symphony, the
Washington National Symphony, the London Philharmonic, the London Symphony, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Over her many years performing in London, she appeared repeatedly in the Promenade Concerts in Albert Hall, including several Last Nights, when favorite soloists are invited to perform. In 1963 she was invited to perform at the White House during the Kennedy administration.
In 1980-81, Ann Schein extended the legacy of her teachers, Mieczyslaw Munz, Arthur Rubinstein, and Dame Myra Hess, performing 6 concerts of the major Chopin repertoire in Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall throughout an entire season to outstanding reviews and sold-out houses, the first Chopin cycle presented in New York in 35 years.
From 1980-2001 she was on the piano faculty of Peabody Conservatory, and since 1984 she has been an Artist-Faculty member of the Aspen Music Festival and School.
During the 2008-09 she served as a Visiting Faculty member at Indiana University. From 2007-2010, she was on the jury of the Irving S. Gilmore Keyboard Festival, culminating in the prize going to Kirill Gerstein as the winner of the 2010 Gilmore Artist Award.
In 2010, she performed concerts and gave master classes in Beijing and Korea, followed by a month's tour in 2013 in Hong Kong, Korea, and Singapore. In December of 2012, Peabody Conservatory honored her with a Distinguished Alumni Award, and she gave a recital in celebration of the event.
In 2013, she performed the 3rd Rachmaninoff Concerto in Brazil, and served on the jury of the International Piano Competition in Panama. In 2013 and 2014, she was a judge for many competitions in the U.S., including Astral in Philadelphia, the Nadia Reisenberg Piano Competition at the Mannes School in New York, and multiple piano competitions at Juilliard and the Manhattan School.
Ann Schein has received many distinguished honors for her Chopin performances, beginning with her first recordings in 1958 for Kapp Records.
Her recent recordings include an album of Schumann for Ivory Classics, an all-Chopin recording of the Opus 28 Preludes and the B minor Sonata for MSR Classics. An all-American album, also for MSR Classics, includes the 1945-46 Elliott Carter Piano Sonata and the Piano Variations of Aaron Copland, as well as a work written for her by double bass and guitar artist, Grammy Award winner and jazz great, John Patitucci, entitled Lakes.
A recent book written by the music critic for the Washington Post, author and musicologist Cecelia Hopkins Porter, entitled, Five Lives in Music: Women Performers, Composers and Impresarios from the Baroque to the Present, features Ann Schein as the Twentieth-Century Artist. She gave a recital in May of 2014 at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the fifth in a series of five concerts and lectures by Cecelia Porter in honor of her book. Also in May 2014, together with her husband, violinist Earl Carlyss and cellist Darrett Adkins, she performed an evening of Ravel and Debussy at the French Embassy in Washington, D.C. in commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of the First World War. Other 2014 performances included concertos of Chopin and Rachmaninoff in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Purchase, New York, as well as many recitals, lectures, and master classes across the U. S. Ann Schein's web site is www.annschein.com
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is a former President of the American Matthay Association. She also
serves as Professor of Music and Director of Performance at Wheaton
College in Norton, Massachusetts, where she teaches piano and courses
in European and American music, including African-American music and
American musical theater. She holds degrees from the New England
Conservatory of Music, Arizona State University, and The Catholic
University of America, where her doctoral dissertation was about
American art song in turn-of-the-century Boston. She is well-known for
her performances and publications in American music, and has presented
papers and lecture recitals at national meetings of the Sonneck Society
for American Music, the College Music Society, and the American Matthay
Association. Concert appearances include the Badia di Cava Music
Festival in Italy, the Master Musicians Festival in Kentucky, the
Sumner School Museum and St. Patrick's in the City in Washington, D.C.,
the Gardner Museum and the French Library in Boston, and various
schools and universities in the United States. Her research interests
are American art song, the concert tradition in African American music,
and American opera and musical theater. A compact disc, Deep River: The Art Songs and
Spirituals of Harry T. Burleigh, in collaboration with Oral Moses, bass, originally on
Northeastern Records, has been reissued by Albany Records; and a new disc, Fi-yer! A
Hundred Years of African-American Song, with tenor William Brown, was recently released
by Albany. She is currently review editor of the College Music Society journal Symposium
and membership secretary of the American Liszt Society.
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Jennifer Shoup
received a Master of Music degree in Piano Performance and Certificate in Piano Pedagogy from
Carnegie Mellon University and a Bachelor of Music degree in Performance from the University of Dayton. She
began Doctoral studies at Arizona State University. Her teachers include Donald Hageman, Eric Street, Enrique
Graf and Caio Pagano. Additional studies took place in Vienna, Austria and at Belgais Center for the Arts
(Portugal).
Jennifer has been a featured soloist with the National Orchestras of Chile, Costa Rica and the University of
Dayton Orchestra. She has presented solo recitals for the Piccolo Spoleto Festival Piano Series (South Carolina), Sigma Alpha Iota National Convention (Florida) and numerous faculty artist series across the United States. She frequently lectures, recently presenting a lecture-recital for the American Matthay Association for Piano at the University of Kansas and the Ohio Federation of Music Clubs Convention held in Cleveland. She has worked with a diverse range of artists including Emanuel Ax, Maria Joao Pires, Earl Wild and Grammy award-winning composer Lucy Simon.
Jennifer has taught for the prestigious Carnegie Mellon Prep School and as adjunct faculty for Cedarville University and the University of Dayton. She currently owns The Piano Preparatory School and Beavercreek Music, serving more than two hundred families in Dayton, Ohio.
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is a past President of the American Matthay Association, and
his biography of Matthay, England's Piano Sage:
The Life and Teachings of Tobias Matthay, was published by
Scarecrow Press in December of 2011.
He has studied with Stewart Gordon, Donald Hageman,
Frank Mannheimer,
and Denise Lassimonne. He has concertized extensively throughout North
America and in 1986 he performed the 24 preludes of Rachmaninoff in New
York's Lincoln Center. He made his London debut in 1988. His numerous
articles have appeared in such journals as the American Music Teacher, the
Piano
Quarterly, and International Piano, and in the summer 1993 issue of American Music he presented new research
concerning musical figures active in
post-Revolutionary Philadelphia. He is also a
contributor to the Revised New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, the new edition of the Grove Dictionary of American Music,
and
his other articles include pieces for the American Musical Instrument Society
Journal,
Symposium (the journal of the College Music Society),
and the Piano Journal of the European Piano Teachers' Association.
He has also recently annotated a series of CDs for APR
commemorating Matthay's pupils—including Harriet Cohen, Irene Scharrer,
Myra Hess, Bartlett & Robertson, and an extensive collection of rare discs featuring Matthay's own recordings. For the Hyperion label, he has also annotated a highly praised disc of the solo works
of Charles Griffes performed by Garrick Ohlsson.
His acclaimed recording of
The Philadelphia
Sonatas of Alexander Reinagle (c.1750-1809) was released on the
Titanic label in 1998.
Siek's
interests have also extended to other areas of American history and
culture, and he has
published and lectured widely on the earlier work of architect Frank
Lloyd Wright, including a three-lecture series on Wright's
early work in Chicago in July of 2013. He has just completed A Dictionary for the Modern Pianist for Rowman and Littlefield, currently scheduled to appear in the fall of 2016 as a component of R&L's musical instrument dictionary series. He holds
the B. Mus.
and the M. Mus. degrees from the University of Maryland and a Ph.D. from the
College-Conservatory of Music of the University of Cincinnati. A professor emeritus of music
at Wittenberg University in Ohio, he now lives in Tempe, Arizona.
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Steven Smith
has performed recitals and concertos throughout the world and has recorded solo recitals for the French, German, and Spanish national radios, Radio 4 Hong Kong, and America’s PBS. His compact discs appear on the Cambria and Innova labels. He has given many master classes and lecture recitals for universities and teacher associations in the United States and abroad, including the University of Melbourne, Australia, Hong Kong’s Academy of Performing Arts, and Glasgow’s Royal Scottish Academy, among others. Recently he has focused on a comprehensive series of recitals of Beethoven’s Sonatas and other repertoire. He received critical acclaim for his series of new-music solo recitals, Piano Entente, presented at Merkin Concert Hall in New York and at St. John’s Smith Square, London. Smith was honored in 2005 with the PSU College of Arts and Architecture’s Faculty Award for Outstanding Teaching; previously he won the Teacher of the Year Award of the Pennsylvania Music Teachers’ Association. His students have won significant national awards, including the Fulbright Scholarship and the Clara Wells Competition of the Matthay Association. In the Music Teachers National Association competitions since 1991, four of his Penn State students have been national semifinalists (Pennsylvania winners). He received his bachelor’s degree summa cum laude from Baylor University, and his Master’s and D.M.A. degrees from The Eastman School of Music, as well as an Artist’s Diploma from the Mozarteum of Salzburg, Austria, where he was a Fulbright scholar. His teachers have included Cécile Genhart and Kurt Neumüller.
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Barry Snyder
is currently a Professor of Piano at the Eastman School of Music, having joined the faculty in 1970. He studied piano with Vladimir Sokoloff and Cécile Genhart, and accompanying with Brooks Smith. He was a member of the Eastman Trio from 1976-82, and the Meadowmount Trio from 1989-90. In 1966, he was a triple prize winner at the Van Cliburn International Competition. He was voted Mu Phi Epsilon Musician of the Year in 1987. His discography includes 32 solo, concerto, and chamber recordings on Bay City, Golden Crest, Mercury, Gasparo, Pro Arte, Pro Viva, Vox, Fun House, and Bridge Records. He has collaborated with noted singers and instrumentalists throughout the world, including Herman Prey, Ani Kavafian, Asako Urushihara, Jan DeGaetani, Ronald Leonard, Steven Doane, Zvi Zeitlin, Bonita Boyd, Francis Tursi, Julius Berger, Sylvia Rosenberg, Paul Tobias, Charles Castleman, James VanDemark, Dong Suk Kang, and with the Cleveland, Curtis, Purcell, and Composer’s quartets. He has performed and given master classes in Japan, Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, Taiwan, China, Australia, Europe, Poland, Russia, and South America. He has performed in festivals in Seattle, Aspen, Schwetzingen (Germany), Takefu (Japan), Vienna, Bechyne (Czech Republic), and Shenyang International (China). He has appeared as soloist with the Detroit, Houston, Atlanta, National, Montreal, Singapore, Krakow Radio/TV, Nagoya, and Japan Philharmonic Orchestras. He has also premiered works by Syd Hodkinson, Verne Reynolds, Toshio Hosokawa, David Liptak, Carter Pann, Alec Wilder, and John LaMontaine. He is listed in the book The Most Wanted Piano Teachers in the United States. He was awarded the Diapason d'Or for recordings of the complete cello and piano works of Fauré with Steven Doane. He received the Edward Peck Curtis Award for Teaching Excellence in 1975.
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Elizabeth Vandevander
received her B.S. degree in music education from Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania, and her M.A. from Goddard College in Vermont She has worked extensively with Donald Hageman, who introduced her to the Matthay principles. She has served as Archivist for the American Matthay Association and from 1987 to 2002, as the Editor of the Matthay News. She presently serves as Secretary to the AMA. Mrs. Vandevander has performed for concert series at the Dayton (Ohio) Art Institute, the Dayton Music Club, the Sigma Alpha Iota women's professional music sorority, Westminster Presbyterian Church, Dayton, and First Church in Belfast, Maine. She has also played on the Shiloh Church Concert Series in Dayton. Presently she is a member of the piano faculty at the University of Dayton, and she also maintains a thriving piano studio in Dayton.
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David Watkins
is a concert pianist, teacher and a member of the piano faculty at
Kennesaw State University. Mr. Watkins made his solo recital debut in
New York at Carnegie Recital Hall in May 1986. His students have
received recognition on state, national and international levels. Mr.
Watkins has released three commercial recordings on the ACA Digital
label. He has also served on the
summer artist faculty of the Eastern Music Festival Mr. Watkins is
certified as a master teacher by the Music Teachers National
Association. He was President of the American Matthay Association
1994-1998, and was president of Georgia Music Teachers Association from
1994-1996. Mr. Watkins is an
international Steinway Artist.
Mr. Watkins is active as a solo recitalist, concerto soloist and
collaborative
performer with an unusually varied repertoire at his command. He has
performed on the national convention programs of the Music Teachers
National Association (Little Rock, Nashville, Salt Lake City), the
American
Matthay Association (Dayton Art Institute, San Jose State University,
Penn
State University), the American Liszt Society, the College Music Society
(St. Louis, Toronto).
and the International Conference on the Arts and Humanities in Honolulu.
He has performed with the Atlanta Virtuosi Chamber Ensemble in and
around his home base of Atlanta and has made appearances with them in
such prestigious places as the University of
Mexico and the North American Cultural Institute in Mexico City. He has
appeared as concerto soloist with many regional orchestras, including
the
Atlanta Ballet Orchestra, Cobb Symphony Orchestra, Atlanta Wind
Symphony and DeKalb Symphony Orchestra. He has performed solo recitals
throughout the United States, from California to Massachusetts, under
the
auspices of many colleges, universities and community concert series. He
also performed regularly with ‘cellist Roger Drinkall; the duo toured
throughout the Midwest and South under the auspices of Allied Concert
Services. Mr. Watkins has accompanied Metropolitan Opera sopranos Irene
Jordan, Linda Zoghby and Patricia Craig in recital.
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