Matthay Festival 2023
Pennsylvania State University

Recitalists and Presenters



Lia Jensen-Abbott

is Professor of Music and Director of the Prentiss M. Brown Honors Program at Albion College. Awarded the Arthur Andersen New Faculty of the Year award in 2016 from Albion College, Lia is well known for her interdisciplinary lecture recitals based on semiotic analysis, Fanny Hensel, Florence Price, Beethoven and Anton Diabelli, and the connections between athletics and music. Her solo and collaborative performances with Dr. Karen Kness have taken her around the United States, Europe, and Central America. In 2012 she performed at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall in New York City. As a clinician and adjudicator, Lia has been invited to judge the MTNA National Finals in San Antonio and Chicago, as well as a judge for the WPTA International Piano Competition, in addition to many regional, state, and local competitions. Her scholarly lecture recitals have been presented at MTNA National Conferences, a CMS International Conference, the International Affiliation of Women in Music 2022 Conference, and three WPTA Conferences. Recently, Lia has recorded a three-volume CD set entitled The Albion College Diabelli Squared Project, which presents Beethoven’s Op. 120, the original Fifty Variations written for Anton Diabelli’s philanthropic project, and thirteen newly commissioned variations on the same Waltz theme. Lia has recorded video teaching modules and live webinars for the Frances Clark Center. For the October/November 2022 issue of the American Music Teacher, Lia was invited to write a pedagogical submission about teaching advanced pedaling. An active member of the Music Teachers National Association, Lia is a Past President of the Michigan MTA. She is a member of the European Piano Teachers Association and the World Piano Teachers Association, and President of the WPTA Michigan Chapter. Lia earned degrees from The University of Nebraska-Lincoln (BM, DMA), Indiana University (Performer Diploma), and The Pennsylvania State University (MM, MA). Her teachers have included Timothy Shafer, Edmund Battersby, Jeremy Denk, and Mark Clinton. She is a co-founder of the Albion College International Piano Festival and Competition and lives in Albion, Michigan with her husband, pianist Dr. David Abbott, their son Charlie, and two dogs. In her spare time, Lia competes in triathlons, plays golf, and reads.




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Richard Becker

is head of piano studies at the University of Richmond. He is active as a recitalist, composer, chamber musician, and poet, and his playing has been acclaimed in Europe and America. Performing on many college campuses over the years, and frequently touring the eastern United States, he has also performed at venues such as Alice Tully Hall, the National Gallery of Art, the French Embassy, the Library of Congress, and at the Hudson River, Kemper, Virginia, and Spencer Museums. He has performed at the Salle Cortot and Salle Michelet in Paris where he has six times been artist-in-residence at Cité Internationale des Arts. Richard Becker’s music has been commissioned by Meet the Composer Grants, by grants from CRS Records, by the Peabody Trio in conjunction with the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University, and he has been a MacDowell Colony Fellow and nominee for an American Academy of Arts and Letters award. His performances and his music have been heard on NPR, Voice of America, WNYC, WETA, WGMS, and WCVE, and at the American Music Festival of the National Gallery of Art. They have also been featured at CMS and MTNA conferences and during residencies at Marshall, James Madison, Eastern Mennonite Universities,the Longy School of Music and the Peabody and New England Conservatories and at the Eastman School of Music. He coached chamber music alongside the late Blanche Moyse and he performed and coached chamber music with members of the Shanghai Quartet during their the decade of an artist-residency at University of Richmond. Richard Becker’s playing has been cited for its “powerful interpretations” by the Washington Post, for being “admirable in taste and technique” by the New York Times, and for being “brilliant and with seamless passagework and elegant phrasing” by the Richmond Times-Dispatch. His playing is grounded in the tradition of Arthur Schnabel acquired during his study with the late Leonard Shure while at Boston University (M. Mus.). His teaching owes much to the relaxation methods of Tobias Matthay, learned from Cécile Staub Genhart during his years at the Eastman School of Music (B.Mus. and Performers Certificate). He taught at the University of Texas and Boston University prior to joining the music faculty of the University of Richmond in 1975. In recent years, Richard Becker’s poetry has been published by America, Columbia Magazine, Visions-International, Cold Mountain and Poetica Magazine: Contemporary Jewish Writing and Art and his poetic sequence, “FATES,” was a 2008 chapbook of The Literary Review. Hiscompositions have been recorded by CRS and his performances are available on Albany Records.



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Bradford Gowen

earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Eastman School of Music where he studied piano with Cécile Genhart and composition with Samuel Adler. He later studied piano with Leon Fleisher and with Dorothy Taubman. In 1978 he won the first Kennedy Center/Rockefeller Foundation International Competition for Excellence in the Performance of American Music. The following year he made his New York recital debut at Alice Tully Hall, and has since performed widely, including a performance of the Copland Piano Concerto with the National Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer. Other concerto appearances with that orchestra were conducted by Mstislav Rostropovich and Maxim Shostakovich. He has also given the world premiere of Samuel Adler’s First Piano Concerto at the Kennedy Center and the world premiere of the Piano Sonata of Judith Lang Zaimont. Mr. Gowen's numerous chamber music performances have included appearances at the Library of Congress Summer Chamber Festival, with the Kronos and Guarneri Quartets, and with cellist David Soyer. He has also made many duo appearances with his wife, pianist Maribeth Gowen. He has served as a judge for international, national, and regional piano competitions, and served on the Advisory Committee that created and ran the Seventeen Magazine/General Motors National Concerto Competition in the 1980s and 1990s. For several decades Mr. Gowen has written about piano music for such journals as The Piano Quarterly, Piano & Keyboard, and the London-based International Piano. In the Fall of 2022 the University of Rochester Press published his book A Performer’s Guide to the Piano Music of Samuel Adler. He has been on the faculty of the School of Music at the University of Maryland since 1981. He is one of the 48 pianists featured in Benjamin Saver's 1993 book The Most Wanted Piano Teachers in the USA.




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Christopher Guzman

enjoys an international performing career, showcasing a broad range of styles from the Baroque era to the avant-garde. Since winning top prizes in international competitions such as the Walter M. Naumburg Competition (USA), the Seoul International Music Competition (S. Korea) and the Isang Yun Competition (S. Korea), Mr. Guzman has performed across Europe, North and South America, and Asia. As a result of winning the top prize at the Concours International de Piano d’Orléans in Orléans, France, he has toured France extensively, giving performances and teaching masterclasses. He has appeared in concert in major international venues as Tokyo’s Suntory Hall, Leipzig’s Gewandhaus, Buenos Aires’s Kirchner Cultural Center, Carnegie’s Weill Hall, London’s Wigmore Hall and others. As a chamber musician, he has collaborated with the classical music world’s most exciting soloists, including Ilya Gringolts, Antoine Tamestit, David Fray, and Jeremy Denk, among others. He continually performs with members of the world’s finest orchestras, including the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, and the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra. He appears regularly on the New York Philharmonic’s chamber music series “Philharmonic Ensembles,” and recently performed with musicians of the Chicago Symphony at their home in Orchestra Hall. While Mr. Guzman has won multiple international prizes for his performances of traditional repertoire, much of his career has been centered on music written after 1900; his performances have included world premieres by Donald Martino, Nico Muhly, and Paul Schoenfield. The New York Times hailed his performance of Christopher Theofanidis’s Statues as “coiled” and “explosive.” His CD of German and Austrian music from the past one hundred years, Vienne et après, is available on the Tessitures label; his CD of music of Paul Reale on the Naxos Label, “Chopin’s Ghosts,” was included in Fanfare magazine’s Top Five releases of 2018. He has subsequently recorded two additional albums of Reale’s music, including chamber music and concerti, to much critical acclaim. Mr. Guzman will release a premiere video recording of piano works of Mexican composer Carlos Chávez in 2023. Born in Texas, Christopher Guzman began studying piano at age nine and violoncello two years later. He worked primarily with Jerome Lowenthal and Robert McDonald at the Juilliard School, Anton Nel at the University of Texas at Austin, and the late Patricia Zander at the New England Conservatory. He is currently Professor of Piano at Penn State University, and will join the piano faculty of Northwestern University in the fall of 2023.




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Julian Hellaby

holds a PhD, as well as an MMus, a BMus and an LRAM diploma. He has also been awarded the ARAM by the Royal Academy of Music. He studied piano with the distinguished pianist Denis Matthews—a devoted pupil of Matthay's student Harold Craxton—and later at London’s Royal Academy of Music. He has performed as solo pianist, concerto soloist, accompanist and chamber musician in continental Europe, the Middle East, South Africa and throughout the UK, including recitals in the Wigmore Hall and Purcell Room. He has broadcast for overseas television and radio and also for the BBC. Additionally, two-piano work with pianist Peter Noke has included performances across the UK, as well as in Hong Kong and China. Peter and Julian recently celebrated their twentieth anniversary as a duo with a concert in Steinway Hall, London. Julian is a former ABRSM examiner, moderator, trainer and public presenter, and was also a mentor for the ABRSM’s Certificate of Teaching course. He has taught academic music at Coventry University and London College of Music, and also has extensive experience of adjudicating and piano teaching, including in masterclass settings. He has released several CDs for the ASC and MSV labels, and his book Reading Musical Interpretation was published by Ashgate in 2009. His second book, The Mid-Twentieth-Century Concert Pianist: An English Experience, was published by Routledge in 2018, and he recently edited a multi-author compilation on the subject of topic theory and performance, also for Routledge.









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Alexander Kobrin

has been called the “Van Cliburn of today” by the BBC, and he has placed himself at the forefront of today's performing musicians. His prize-winning performances have been praised for their brilliant technique, musicality, and emotional engagement with the audience. The New York Times has written that he "surrendered neither the smoothness nor the dynamic fluidity that the modern piano allows, and he gave his sense of fantasy free rein, creating an almost confessional spirit," and that his performance was a “fastidious guide” to Schumann’s “otherworldly visions, pointing out hunters, flowers, haunted corners and friendly bowers, all captured in richly characterized vignettes.” After Mr. Kobrin’s performance of the Brahms Second with Syracuse Symphony, one critic wrote, “This was a performance that will be revered and remembered as a landmark of the regeneration of exceptional classical music in Central New York.”

In 2005, Mr. Kobrin was awarded the Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Gold Medal at the Twelfth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth.. His numerous successes in competitions also include top prizes at the Busoni International Piano Competition (First Prize), Hamamatsu International Piano Competition (Top Prize), Scottish International Piano Competition in Glasgow (First Prize) He has performed with many of the world’s great orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, the Tokyo Philharmonic, the Russian National Orchestra, the Belgrade Philharmonic, the English Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra Verdi, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Moscow Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the Dallas Symphony, Berliner Symphony, Chicago Sinfonietta, Swedish Radio Symphony, Birmingham Symphony, Warsaw Philharmonic, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. He has collaborated with such conductors as Mikhail Pletnev, Mikhail Jurovsky, Mark Elder, Vassiliy Sinaisky, James Conlon, Claus Peter Flor, Alexander Lazarev, Vassiliy Petrenko and Bramwell Tovey. He has appeared in recital at major halls worldwide, including Carnegie Zankel Hall and Avery Fisher Hall in New York, the Kennedy Centre in Washington, Albert Hall and Wigmore Hall in London, Louvre Auditorium, Salle Gaveau and Salle Cortot in Paris, Munich Herkulesaal and Berliner Filarmonia Hall in Germany, the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire, Sheung Wan Civic Centre in Hong Kong, as well as Sala Verdi in Milan and many others. Other past performances have included recitals at Bass Hall for the Cliburn Series, the Washington Performing Arts Society, La Roque d'Antheron, the Ravinia Festival, the Beethoven Easter Festival, Busoni Festival, the renowned Klavier-Festival Ruhr, the Festival Musique dans le Grésivaudan, the International Keyboard Institute & Festival, annual concert tours in Japan, China, and Taiwan.

Though widely acclaimed as a performer, Mr. Kobrin’s teaching has been an inspiration to many students through his passion for music. From 2003 to 2010 he served on the faculty of the Russian State Gnessin’s Academy of Music. In 2010 Alexander Kobrin was named the L. Rexford Distinguished Chair in Piano at the Schwob School of Music at Columbus State University, and from 2013 until 2017 has been a member of the celebrated Artist Faculty of New York University’s Steinhardt School. In July 2017, Mr. Kobrin has joined the faculty of the renowned Eastman School of Music in Rochester. He has also given masterclasses in Europe and Asia, the International Piano Series, and at the Conservatories of Japan and China. In 2020, he became co-director of Hiiumaa Homecoming Festival in Estonia. Mr. Kobrin has been a jury member for many international piano competitions, including the Van Cliburn in Fort Worth, the Busoni International Piano Competition in Bolzano, Hamamatsu International Piano Competition, the Blüthner International Piano Competition in Vienna, E-Competition in Fairbanks, Alaska, and the Neuhaus International Piano Festival in Moscow. Mr. Kobrin has released recordings on the Harmonia Mundi, Quartz, and Centaur labels, covering a wide swath of the piano literature to critical acclaim. His Schumann album, released on Centaur Records has been included into the top-5 albums of the year in 2015 by Fanfare Magazine. Gramophone Magazine raved about his Cliburn Competition release on Harmonia Mundi, writing that “in [Rachmaninoff’s] Second Sonata (played in the 1931 revision), despite fire-storms of virtuosity, there is always room for everything to tell and Kobrin achieves a hypnotic sense of the music’s dark necromancy.” Alexander Kobrin was born in 1980 in Moscow. At the age of five, he was enrolled in the world-famous Gnessin Special School of Music after which he attended the prestigious Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatoire. His teachers have included renowned professors Tatiana Zelikman and Lev Naumov. He immigrated to the United States in 2010 and became a US citizen in 2015.

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Heather Lanners

received her Bachelors Degree in Piano Performance from the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada as a student of John Paul Bracey. She then continued her studies in Paris with French pianist Cecile Ousset. While in Paris, she also earned the Diplome Supérieur en Musique de Chambre at the Ecole Normale de Musique. Since the completion of a Masters Degree in Piano Performance and Literature with Barry Snyder at the Eastman School of Music, Ms. Lanners has worked as the Opera Coach at both the Cleveland Institute of Music and the University of Akron. Some of her professional engagements have included performing regularly as the pianist for the Cleveland Opera on Tour, and as a resident pianist for the prestigious Meadowmount School of Music String Camp. Professor Lanners has performed extensively throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe in both solo piano and chamber music. She has performed in public master classes for such artists as Jean Barr, Natalia Antonova, Robert Silverman, Anner Bijlsma, and Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi. She has participated with full scholarship in the Holland Summer Music Sessions, where she performed daily in public master classes and recitals located in and around Amsterdam. Ms. Lanners is engaged frequently as an adjudicator throughout Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas. She has also served as the Chair for the OMTA and MTNA State Piano Competitions (2006-2014). She is active as a guest lecturer, having presented lecture-recitals at the Eastman School of Music Summer Piano Festival and for the Oklahoma Music Teachers Association Conference. In its June/July, 2001 issue, American Music Teacher published her article, "Welcoming the Collaborative Arts into our Teaching Studios." Ms. Lanners has also served on the faculty of the Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute and as a featured artist at the Amadeus Piano Festival in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She teaches applied piano, piano pedagogy, and class piano at Oklahoma State University.






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Jim Lees

has had a long but interrupted affiliation with the Matthay Association. In 1971, while a student of Donald Hageman, he was the recipient of the first Clara Wells award. He was awarded the prize again in 1974. For the next ten years or so, Jim was active in the Association's annual festivals, and highlights for him included playing recitals in Toronto and San Jose. In 1976 he became the principal pianist for the San Francisco Ballet which gave him opportunities to perform as a piano soloist at numerous venues including Wolf Trap, Blossom Center, the Edinburgh Festival, and the White House. However, in the mid-80's he went through a period of disillusionment with the music "business" and abruptly decided to move to Las Vegas to become a poker dealer. After a few years, though, he hit an emotional and spiritual bottom. The silver lining, though, is that he became a believer in Jesus Christ. This newfound faith became the impetus for him to return to the piano seriously about 30 years later, around 2014, in Chattanooga, Tennessee. In that endeavor he has been helped greatly by the piano teachers Steven Wilber, Cahill Smith, and currently, Lynn Worcester Jones. In 2018 he had the great privilege of presenting a recital at the Matthay festival in Jackson, TN. He has been active since and is sincerely grateful to be back.











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Terry McRoberts

is a past President of the American Matthay Association for Piano and a former editor of the Matthay News. His principal teachers include Donald Hageman, Robert Elliott Hopkins, Mitchell Andrews, and Genita Speicher, and he holds degrees from Ball State, Youngstown State, and Manchester universities. He has given presentations on Matthay principles and his students, silence in music, Chinese music, and contemporary music in various professional settings. He served the Tennessee Music Teachers Association and the Southern Chapter of the College Music Society as president, and edited Tennessee Music Teacher. McRoberts has taught for thirty years at Union University, and previously taught at Blue Mountain University. He serves as organist at First Presbyterian Church in Jackson, Tennessee, reads thirty books a year, and enjoys walking.












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Richard Masters

is a soloist, opera coach, chamber musician and orchestral pianist based in Blacksburg, VA, where he is associate professor of piano and collaborative piano on the music faculty at Virginia Tech's School of Performing Arts. Significant collaborations include concerts with baritone Donnie Ray Albert, flutist Valerie Coleman, mezzo-soprano Marta Senn, the late mezzo-soprano Barbara Conrad, and many others. He has appeared with former Boston Symphony principal trombonist Norman Bolter, former Juilliard String Quartet violinist Earl Carlyss, saxophonist Harvey Pittel, and under the baton of the late Lorin Maazel. Masters has performed solo, chamber and vocal recitals throughout the U.S. and in Europe. As a solo pianist, Masters plays a wide variety of standard and non-traditional repertoire, including contemporary pieces written for or commissioned by him. A strong proponent of contemporary American composers, he has performed world premieres of pieces by Kenneth Frazelle, Charles Nichols, Kent Holliday, and many others. He is an enthusiastic performer of British music from the early 20th century, focusing in particular on the solo piano music of John Ireland. The critic John France wrote on MusicWeb International "Richard Masters approaches [John Ireland's Piano Sonata] with great style and understanding: all the facets of Ireland’s art are present here: ‘…the lyrical, the dramatic, the extrovert and the melancholy – the intense self-questioning and the open, almost naïve, avowals.’" Recent appearances include performances at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum's "Music at the Gardner" series, the National Flute Convention in Washington D.C., the San Francisco Conservatory, the Schola Cantorum in Paris, and concerts in Toronto and Trinidad/Tobago. He has also performed at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, CA and the Percy Grainger Home and Museum in White Plains, NY. His album "Let Evening Come," a disc of American art song performed with sopranos Emily Martin and Ariana Wyatt, was selected by Chicago Tribune critic Howard Reich as one of the "best classical recordings of 2020." "Percy and Friends," a collection of music by Percy Grainger and his contemporaries, and "In a Time of War," a recording of music for clarinet and piano performed with Philip O. Paglialonga, are available on Heritage Records. A forthcoming disc of Ernest Bloch transcribed for clarinet and piano will also be available on the Heritage label. In addition to his performances as a pianist, Masters is active in the world of opera and musical theatre as a coach and conductor. He recently conducted performances of Carousel, Fiorello!, Oh, Kay!, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Le Nozze di Figaro, Babes in Arms, and in Summer 2018 served as associate head coach with the Pittsburgh Festival Opera, working on Wagner's Das Rheingold and Strauss's Arabella. In April of 2019, he and his Virginia Tech colleague Amanda Nelson revived The Sap of Life, a show written by the song writing duo Maltby and Shire that was last performed in 1964. Prior to joining the faculty at Virginia Tech, he was principal opera coach at the University of Texas at Austin. Richard Masters is a Yamaha Artist. He holds degrees from University of Colorado at Boulder (BM), The Juilliard School (MM), and the Eastman School of Music (DMA).






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Barton Moreau

made his solo debut in a New York City performance with the New England Youth Ensemble at the age of 15. He has since performed as a featured soloist with orchestras across the United States, including the Northwest Florida Symphony, New Orleans Symphony, Port City Symphony (Mobile, AL), Mesa Symphony (Arizona), Gulf Coast Symphony, and the Boise Baroque Orchestra. Moreau’s honors include a top prize at the Debose National Piano Competition and a collegiate artist award from the Alabama Music Teachers Association. In 2007, he was a finalist at the World Piano Pedagogy Conference’s PIANOvision Most Wanted Piano Competition, an international online competition created by Benjamin Saver. As a collaborative artist, Moreau has performed with a diverse array of distinguished international players, including clarinetists Robert Spring and Jorge Montilla, oboists Andrea Ridilla and Gonzalo Ruiz, violinist Rachel Barton Pine, and composer-violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR). He has appeared at national and international conferences, including those of the College Music Society, International Double Reed Society (IDRS), and the International Clarinet Association (ICA), most recently at ClarinetFest 2018. Other performances include appearances with the Boise Philharmonic Orchestra, and at the McCall Second Sunday Sounds Concert Series (Idaho). Moreau joined the Boise Baroque Orchestra as principal keyboardist in 2012 and regularly appears on their subscription series. Moreau holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Arizona State University, and a Master of Music degree in piano performance from Indiana University. His collegiate career began at the University of South Alabama, where he was a recipient of the Theodore Presser Award. Moreau’s major teachers were Robert Hamilton, Karen Shaw, and Jerry Bush. He has also coached with Lee Luvisi, Fabio Bidini, Mykola Suk, and Leonard Hokanson. Moreau serves as a Lecturer of Music at Boise State, teaching courses in piano, music theory, and music history. In addition to his collegiate teaching and performance activities, he is also an active studio teacher and adjudicator and a Member of the American Matthay Association for Piano.








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John Novak

is Professor of Music Theory at Northern Illinois University. He earned his Master of Music in Piano Pedagogy and Literature at the University of Texas at Austin studying under David Renner. Novak subsequently received a Ph.D. in Music Theory from the University of Texas at Austin, where he was awarded the Kent Kennan Scholarship in Music Theory and the John Maresh Scholarship in Czech Culture. Novak has taught at Austin Community College, the University of Texas at Austin, and Oberlin Conservatory. He joined the faculty of the School of Music at Northern Illinois University in 1996. Novak has published a monograph on the symphonic works of Leoš Janáček, and recently co- authored a book on Czech popular and folk music performed regularly in the state of Texas. Novak has written articles for College Music Symposium, Indiana Theory Review, the International Journal of Musicology, Bulgarian Musicology, Kosmas, and Hudební Výda as well as for Oxford and Clerendon Presses.  The subjects of his articles include the music of Dvořák, Bartók, Janáček, Suk, and various styles of popular music.













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Nancy Perrin

received her Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance from the Ohio State University where she studied with Miriam Mooney, herself a student of Tobias Matthay. At Ohio State, Nancy also minored in Vocal Performance. At Wright State University, Nancy earned a Master of Music with a concentration in piano. There, she studied with Donald Hageman. with whom she continued to study for a few more years post-graduation. In addition to traditional piano study, Nancy has also focused on jazz piano studies. She is a past lecturer-performer at the Matthay festivals. She has won the WSU Concerto Competition and performed Gershwin's Concerto in F with the WSU Symphony Orchestra. Nancy concertizes in the southern Ohio area including appearances at the Dayton Art Institute, Dayton Music Club events, and Sinclair Community College. Partnering with Jim Lees, Nancy and Jim performed at the Art Institute, playing Bartok's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, performed outdoors and complete with a helicopter flying overhead mid-performance! She is a silver medal winner from the American College of Musicians/National Guild of Piano Teachers for her performance of Alberto Ginastera's Piano Sonata No. 1, Op. 22. She is on the music faculty at Sinclair College in Dayton, where she teaches piano and music courses, and is a pianist for the vocal music and theatre departments. In addition, Nancy is very active as a professional pianist at Wright State University in Dayton, working in the music department and music theatre division. Other activities include serving as pianist and musical director for many musical theatre productions in the Dayton area. Nancy lives near Dayton in Centerville, Ohio.






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John Perry

holds an international reputation as a distinguished pianist and as one of the world's great teachers. A Minnesota native, he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the Eastman School of Music where he was a student of Cécile Genhart, while during the summers, he continued his work with the eminent Frank Mannheimer. A recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, he continued studies in Europe for four years where he worked with Wladyslav Kedra, Polish concert artist and professor at the Akademie für Musik in Vienna, and Carlo Zecchi, renowned conductor, pianist, and head of the piano department at the Santa Cecilia Academy of Music in Rome. Mr. Perry has won numerous awards, including the highest prizes in both the Busoni and Viotti international piano competitions, and special honors at the Marguerite Long International Competition in Paris. Since then, he has performed extensively throughout Europe and North America to great critical acclaim. Also a respected chamber musician, Mr. Perry has collaborated with some of the finest instrumentalists in the world. He also enjoys an international reputation as a teacher, presenting master classes throughout the world. He is often a jury member at some of the most prestigious international piano competitions, and his students have been prize winners in most major competitions. They include two first-prize winners in the Rubinstein, four first-prize winners in the Music Teacher's National Association national competition, and first-prize winners in the Naumburg National Chopin competition, the Cleveland Competition, the Beethoven Foundation competition, the Federated Music Clubs, the YKA, AMSC, and YMF competitions, as well as finalists in the Chopin International in Warsaw, the Van Cliburn, the Queen Elisabeth, the Leeds, the Dublin, the Busoni, the Viotti and the Three Rivers competitions. John Perry is professor at the Glenn Gould School of the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, professor of piano at Mason Gross Schoo of the Arts, Rutgers University, and Professor Emeritus of the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music. In addition, he recently founded a music school, the John Perry Academy of Music in Los Angeles, where he serves as Artistic Director. During the summer he is artist professor at the Lake Como International Piano Academy, the Banff Center in Alberta, Canada, the Sarasota Music Festival in Florida, the Orford Music Festival in Quebec, the Morningside Music Bridge Program in Calgary, Alberta, the Internationaler Klaviersommer Cochem, Germany, the International Music Festival in Perugia, Italy, the Amalfi Coast Music Festival in Italy, Montecito International Music Festival in Santa Barbara, and the John Perry Academy Summer Piano Festival in California. In January he is main guest artist at the Sydney Piano Festival in Australia. His recordings are available on the Telefunken, Musical Heritage Society, CBC, ACA and Fox labels.


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Jennifer Shoup

is a frequent soloist and chamber musician who performs throughout the United States and abroad. She has been a featured soloist with the National Orchestras of Chile, Costa Rica, and the University of Dayton Orchestra, and presented solo recitals for the Piccolo Spoleto Festival, Sigma Alpha Iota National Convention, Ohio Music Teachers Association and numerous university Artist Series. She has presented solo and lecture recitals for the American Matthay Association for Piano held at Arizona State University, Pennsylvania State University, Texas Wesleyan University and the University of Kansas. Jennifer received a Master of Music degree in Piano Performance and Certificate in Piano Pedagogy from Carnegie Mellon University and began Doctoral studies in Piano Performance 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). 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 Preparatory School and as adjunct faculty for the University of Dayton and Cedarville University. She has served as past President of The Dayton Music Club, Chair of the Ohio Federation of Music Clubs, Vice-President of Programming for the Ohio Music Teachers Association Western District, and as Archivist and Editor of The Matthay News. She currently owns The Piano Preparatory School, serving more than four hundred families in Dayton, Ohio.





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Stephen Siek

is a past President of the American Matthay Association. His biography of Matthay, England's Piano Sage: The Life and Teachings of Tobias Matthay, was published by Scarecrow Press in December of 2011, and the paperback and Kindle versions were published by the H. W. Marston Press in December of 2020. His highly acclaimed A Dictionary for the Modern Pianist was published by Rowman & Littlefield in November 2016. 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), the Piano Journal of the European Piano Teachers' Association, and Emeritus Voices, a journal published by Arizona State University. 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, and for Deutsche Grammophon, a reissue of Paul Baumgartner's legendary recording of the Diabelli Variations, and a 19-CD set comprising all the DG recordings of the Hungarian-American pianist Andor Foldes. He has also annotated several titles for Decca, including the recent Eloquence reissue of the complete Decca recordings of Dame Moura Lympany, and a recent reissue of all the Decca recordings of the American pianist Ruth Slenczynska. His annotated collection of the complete solo recordings of the British pianist Cyril Smith was released to high acclaim by the APR label in September of 2021, and two collections devoted to Wilhelm Kempff have been deemed as historic: a set of electrical recordings for APR (fall 2021), and a 3-CD set of all the pianist's acoustical recordings for Marston Records (fall 2022). His own 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 work in Chicago in July of 2013, and recent courses at both Mesa Community College (AZ) and Arizona State University. Currently a Faculty Associate at ASU, in the last several years has also taught nearly a dozen courses on the piano and American music. 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 at the University of Cincinnati. In May of 2019, he was named an Honorary Associate of the Royal Academy of Music in London. A professor emeritus of music at Wittenberg University in Ohio, he also maintains a studio in Tempe, Arizona. Its website is www.pianosage.net/studio.html



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Steven Smith

is the current President of the American Matthay Association, and professor emeritus of piano at Penn State. He has performed throughout the world, including solo recitals and concertos as recently as 2022. He has recorded solo recitals for the French, German and Spanish national radios, Radio 4 Hong Kong, and America’s PBS Television. His recent projects include a comprehensive, acclaimed series of Beethoven recitals and compact discs called Piano Masterworks of Beethoven (released on Soundwaves and reviewed with superlatives by Alan Becker in the American Record Guide), including all the 32 Sonatas and many other beloved works of the Beethoven repertoire. Other recent performances include Beethoven presentations and master classes in Beijing and Zhengzhou, China. He performed a lecture-recital at the London International Piano Symposium, 2015. Steven Herbert Smith’s degrees include the DMA and M.Mus. from the Eastman School of Music, as well as the Artist’s Diploma from the Mozarteum of Salzburg, Austria. His artist teachers included Cécile Genhart and Kurt Neumüller. More recently he worked in Vienna with the celebrated pianist Paul Badura-Skoda regarding aspects of the Beethoven repertoire. Hear Steven Smith in a live performance of Chopin's "Heroic" Polonaise (op. 53 in A-flat) in Penn State's new Recital Hall here.







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Nicholas Susi

is the current vice-president of the American Matthay Association and winner of the college division of the 2017 Clara Wells Fellowships. He has also received the 2015-2017 National Federation of Music Clubs Young Artist Award, and he has fulfilled numerous engagements across the country as performer, masterclass clinician, competition adjudicator, lecturer, and community outreach speaker. Recent career highlights include the 2016 release of his debut recording, Scarlatti Now, two concerts for the Princess von Hohenzollern at her castle in Namedy, Germany, and his performance at the Tivoli Vredenburg in Utrecht, The Netherlands, during the semifinals of the 2014 International Franz Liszt Piano Competition. Other noteworthy appearances include a performance at Klavierfestival Ruhr and concerto solos with the Omaha Symphony, Wiener Residenz Orchester, and St. Louis Chamber Orchestra among others. A native of St. Louis, Missouri, Dr. Susi is Assistant Professor of Piano at the University of South Carolina. He previously taught piano and music theory at The College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, Minnesota. He completed his doctorate at the University of Michigan, with previous studies at the University of Kansas and at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln as a two-time DAAD grantee. Primary teachers include Zena Ilyashov, Jack Winerock, Nina Tichman, and Arthur Greene. For details on upcoming performances, booking information, and further listening, please visit his website: www.nicholas-susi.com









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Ivy Lu Wang

is an active pianist, chamber musician, lecturer, teacher, and founder of the Conero International Piano Festival & Competition and the International Piano Professionals Association (IPPA). A DMA graduate from the University of Kansas, she studied with Dr. Scott McBride Smith. She currently serves as an assistant professor of practice in piano pedagogy at the University of Kansas. As an inspiring lecturer and teacher, Wang is frequently invited to give concerts, masterclasses, and lectures at many different universities and piano schools. She has given online pedagogical lectures which have drawn an audience of thousands of piano teachers. Wang's academic research specialty is injury prevention. She graduated with honors from the University of Kansas with her doctoral Dissertation “Applying the Rotation Principle to Avoid Injury in Piano Practice”. Wang was selected to represent the KU MTNA chapter to give a presentation on remote piano teaching methods in 2017 MTNA conference in Baltimore. She has presented at the 2017 and 2022 KMTA conferences. During her masters’ program, she cooperated with medical doctoral students, and created a research program named “How Pianists coexist with tenosynovitis”, which received a research grant and was named as the honored research program at the Sichuan Conservatory of Music in 2014. In her performance career, Wang has won multiple competition prizes, including the first prize in the 2011 Zhong-sin International Music Competition in Singapore, where she was invited to perform in the award ceremony with the jury. In June 2011, she won the first prize in the Second Deutschland and China & Gemeinsam Competition in Sichuan Province. Wang has performed on multiple occasions in China, Singapore, Italy, Israel and the US. She has been invited every year to perform in the PBD international music concert at the University of Kansas, and the Chinese New Year Concert in Kansas City since 2017. In 2021, Wang was invited by CCTV (China Central Television) and KCCA (Kansas City Chinese Association), to perform for the “24-Hour Global Virtual Concert."









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Signe Sebo Zale

is the current treasurer of the American Matthay Association for Piano and is an active performer both as soloist and collaborator. A student of Cécile Staub Genhart and Frank Mannheimer, Mrs. Zale attended the Eastman School of Music and was awarded Bachelor of Music with Distinction and Master of Music degrees in performance and pedagogy. While at Eastman, she performed as a soloist with the Eastman Rochester Orchestra, was awarded a graduate assistantship and taught class piano. After several decades of maintaining a large independent piano studio in Rochester, New York, Mrs. Zale earned a Master of Science degree in counseling from the University of Rochester and served as a school counselor and administrator for eighteen years. At the time of her retirement in 2000, she was the Director of Counseling responsible for the K-12 School Counselor program in the Churchville-Chili School District. Mrs. Zale has presented three lecture/performances at the annual Matthay Festivals, most recently at the 2014 Festival at Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth. Texas. Mrs. Zale is also a member of Mu Phi Epsilon, International Professional Music Fraternity and was a featured soloist at the 2008 Mu Phi Epsilon International Convention in Jacksonville, Florida. In 2011, she was awarded the Orah Ashley Lamke Distinguished Alumna Award by the fraternity. As a District Director, she mentors the Mu Phi Epsilon collegiate chapters at the Eastman School of Music, Ithaca College, and SUNY Binghamton.









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