John
Kenneth Adams
received his early musical training in Birmingham, Alabama, where
he studied piano with Guy and Elizabeth Allen at the Birmingham College of Music. After moving
to Kansas City, Missouri, he continued his training with Mary Newitt Dawson at the University of Kansas City.
During this time he also studied with Carl Friedberg, one of the last students of Clara Schumann, and with Joanna Graudan at
the Aspen Festival. A Victor Wilson Scholar at the Yale School of Music, he studied with Bruce Simonds, and twice won the Concerto
Competition and was awarded the Lockwood Prize for the best piano recital. A Fulbright Scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music followed,
where he studied with Hilda Dederich, and in 1960 he attended the Casals Festival in Zermatt in 1960 as an accompanist. From 1961 until 1971
he studied with Frank Mannheimer, especially during his renowned series of summer sessions in Duluth, Minnesota. Mr.
Adams has played on many important series throughout the USA, and during the 1970s made many tours for the United States Information Service in South America,
Spain, Italy, and Central America. He made an extensive tour for Gioventu Musicale throughout Italy in 1976 and in 1978 he made his New York debut with an all-French program
in Carnegie Recital Hall.
His concerts in South Carolina over the past four decades now number in the hundreds, and he is
especially well know as an interpreter of French piano music. He is a member of the Board of
Directors for the French Piano Institute in Paris, and has documented the piano music of Debussy
in a series of articles for the Piano Quarterly. In 1985-6 he performed all of Debussy's
piano music in five recitals at the University of South Carolina. He received the Alumni
Achievement Award from the University of Missouri in 1981. In 1997 he was awarded the Mungo
Award for distinguished teaching of undergraduates by the University of South Carolina, and
in 1999 was made a member of The Guardian Society by USC President John Palms. He is a regular
visitor to South Korea, where he has made seven visits since 1986. In 1997 he visited Sophia,
Bulgaria where he gave masterclasses at the National Conservatory and was a guest of the Varna
International Choral Festival in Varna, Bulgaria. This past year he visited France, Italy and
South Korea for concerts, masterclasses and private lessons. In addition to his solo recitals,
he often joins Ella Ann Holding (Artist in Residence at Campbell University) for duo-piano
recitals in the Southeast. In April 2000 he received an Alumni Citation of Merit from Yale
University. John Kenneth Adams is Distinguished Professor of Piano at the University of South
Carolina School of Music, where he has served on the faculty since 1964.
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Gregory
Anderson
at the age of 19, is the 2000 winner of the Clara Wells Scholarship Auditions and he is currently a student of Julian Martin at
the Juilliard School in New York City. He has also studied with Kim Craig at
the Conservatory of Music at the University of St. Thomas, with Aiko Onishi,
and with John Perry. He has been a participant at the Aspen Summer Music
Festival and School and the Bowdoin Summer Music Festival in Maine. Recently
he was featured on National Public Radio when he performed on A Prairie Home
Companion with Garrison Keillor and From the Top with Christopher O'Riley.
He has performed concerti by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Saint-Saëns, and
Chopin with several orchestras including the Minnesota Sinfonia, the
Mississippi Valley Orchestra, and the Chippewa Valley Symphony. Anderson
also composes and was named the Minnesota Music Educators Association 1999
Composer of the Year for his compositions, "Fantasy for Piano" and "French
Overture" for string orchestra. Among the honors and awards Anderson has
received are top prizes in
the Thursday Musical Piano Competition, the Schubert Club Piano Competition,
and the Minneapolis Music Teachers Forum Competition. In 1999 he was awarded
second runner-up in the MTNA Senior High Piano Competition, and in 1997 he was
a national finalist in the MTNA Junior High Piano Competition. At the Aspen
Music Festival this past summer, he was runner-up in the Schumann Piano
Concerto Competition and was also selected to perform in a master class with
Leon Fleisher.
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Steve Clark
is a member of both the American
Matthay Association and the American Liszt Society. He appears frequently in recital and
often serves as an adjudicator for piano competitions. Students from his studio have been
declared winners and finalists in state, national, and international piano competitions and
he currently serves as national competitions chair for the Music Teachers National Association.
Mr. Clark is a nationally recognized clinician in the field of music technology and he is chair
of the committee on technology for the Georgia Music Teachers Association. He is the creator
on numerous Internet-based resources for musicians including web pages such as "The Piano in
CyberSpace" and Internet mail lists: Pno-Ped-L and Chopin-L. Mr. Clark is co-editor of the
Piano Pedagogy Forum, an on-line publication of the School of Music at the University
of South Carolina and he is co-founder and editor of Student Editions, an on-line
concern providing standard teaching literature, edited for the special concerns of piano
students. Mr. Clark serves on the faculty of the Schwob Department of Music at Columbus
State University where he teaches Piano, Piano Pedagogy, Group Piano, and Music Technology.
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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
is a native of Columbia,
South Carolina, and she received the Bachelor of Music degree in piano and voice from
the University of South Carolina where she studied piano with
John Kenneth Adams. She holds a Doctorate of
Musical Arts in piano from the University of Texas where she studied with John Perry.
An accomplished singer, she also earned a DMA from Texas in voice. Further study
included chamber music and accompanying at the Music Academy of the West in Santa
Barbara, California, and study in Duluth with Frank Mannheimer.
She has been the recipient of numerous awards and scholarships and has competed at the
national level, including the Naumburg Piano Competition and the Music Teachers' National
Association (MTNA) piano competition, in which she was a national finalist in 1972. She
recently performed Beethoven's third Concerto with the Coastal Symphony of Georgia at St.
Simon's Island and will be returning there next year for solo performances as well as
another concerto. She has taught applied piano and voice, class piano, coach accompanying,
and sight-reading at Clayton State College in Morrow, Georgia, and the Georgia Academy of Music,
and she held an interim position last year teaching piano majors at Georgia State University.
Currently, she is teaching at the Atlanta Music Academy and also maintains a private studio in
her home in Atlanta.
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Rita Fandrich
has studied with Helen Venn, who was trained by Matthay,
and her additional teachers have included Karen Shaw and Larry Graham. She is currently Associate Professor of Music at Florida Southern
College in Lakeland, where her teaching areas are piano, piano pedagogy, and
music theory. As a performer, she is active both as soloist and as a chamber
ensemble musician. Her students have been first prize winners in such
competitions as the Clara Wells Scholarship Auditions, The
Florida Orchestra Young Artist Competition (Junior Division and Senior
Division Grand Prize), The Florida State Music Teachers Concerto Competitions,
the Gray Perry Piano Competition, and the Ocala Symphony Young Artist
Competition. An active member of the Florida State Music Teachers
Association, she serves on the State Executive Board and is frequently
invited as adjudicator and as clinician for piano master classes and
workshops. She studied at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and
holds the Bachelor of Music cum laude from Cornell College in Iowa and the
Master of Music in performance from Indiana University. She has also
pursued doctoral work at the University of Colorado.
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Donald Hageman
has taught privately
and performed in the Dayton, Ohio, area for
more than forty years. He has 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 is a past President of the American Matthay
Association, he served as a member of the piano faculty at Wright State
University from 1976-83, and for seventeen years he was Director of Concerts
for the Dayton Art Institute. He is also the Founder/Director of the Soirées
Musicales Piano Series, which is now in its thirty-first season,
Since 1963, he 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 1999 he appeared as soloist with Dayton's Miami Valley
Symphony Orchestra in two performances of the
Tchaikovsky G Major Concerto and again in February of 2001 in two
performances of the Mozart Concerto K. 467 and Chopin's Andante Spianato
and Grande Polonaise Brilliante.
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Robin Harrison
was born in London, where
he studied with Frederick Bailey of High Wycombe before winning a
scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music, where he studied with Harold Craxton. After
being presented with the Silver Medal and Albanesi Prize, he was awarded an Italian Government
Scholarship for further studies in Rome, where he was offered a place in Carlo Zecchi's class at
the Accademia di Santa Cecilia. Later, he studied at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, and ultimately, he
returned to London to work under the guidance of Ilona Kabos. He has been heard in frequent
broadcasts for the BBC and other European and South American
radio networks, and his many concerts include several appearances at the Cheltenham Festival
of British Contemporary Music and the Sir Henry Wood Promenade Concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in
London. On the occasion of his long-awaited debut at Carnegie Recital Hall the New
York Times observed, "Robin Harrison is an impressive pianist." The former
Head of Piano in the Department of Music at the University of Saskatchewan, Mr. Harrison
has made guest appearances with leading Canadian orchestras and is well known to Canadian
audiences for his many recital broadcasts on the CBC. He has performed at the Centre D’Arts Orford in
Quebec and has been a guest artist for the American Liszt Society Festivals in Canada and the United
States.
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Marie Hasse
holds a Bachelor of Arts in Piano Performance from the
University
of Central Florida, where she studied with Gary Wolf. She is Head of Keyboard Studies at Polk
Community College and she also teaches privately in the Winter Haven Area. She is currently the
President of the Bach Festival of Central Florida, a past president of the Florida State Music
Teachers Association, and
she frequently adjudicates for FSMTA student events. As Southeastern Regional Junior Festivals
Chairman, she is also active in the student events of the Florida Federation of Music Clubs. Ms.
Hasse is presently serving as Secretary for the American Matthay Association for
the second time and has frequently lectured at the AMA's annual festivals. She performs in
chamber music recitals in the area and lectures on piano pedagogy. In recent years, she has
worked extensively to publicize the contributions of Helen Parker Ford, a Matthay pupil who
specialized in teaching his principles to younger children. Ms. Hasse is also the organist for
First Presbyterian Church in Haines City.
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Kenneth Huber
teaches at Carleton College in Minnesota and resides in both
New York City and Minneapolis. Hundreds of solo and concerto performances have taken him
throughout the country including frequent appearances in New York City. Additionally he has
given master classes and lectures at major colleges and universities. His career often embraces
chamber music and collaboration with opera singers of the Metropolitan, New York City, and
Vienna State Opera companies. From 1968 to 1972 he served as pianist with the United States
Navy Band in Washington, D. C., including performances at the White House and State Department.
In addition to private teaching, he has taught at Virginia Intermont College, Westminster Choir
College (Princeton, New Jersey), and Augsburg College. Mr. Huber holds degrees from Indiana
University and has studied with Leon Fleisher, Gyorgy Sebok, and Frank
Mannheimer.
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George Loring
is currently Vice-President
of the American Matthay Association, and has formerly served as the Association's Secretary.
He
holds a Master of Music in Piano Performance with Honors from the New England Conservatory of
Music and a B.A. cum laude (in Music) from Harvard with additional study at the
Eastman School of Music and Oberlin. His early training was with Albion Metcalf, a pupil
of Dame Myra Hess and Tobias Matthay. He also studied for three summers in England with
Denise Lassimonne, the ward of Tobias Matthay and former faculty of the Tobias Matthay
Pianoforte School and the Royal Academy of Music, London. Other teachers include Leonard
Shure, Jacob Maxin, and Dusi Mura. Formerly Director of Keyboard Studies at St. Paul's
School, he is currently an Artist-in-Residence at Keene State College in Keene, New Hampshire,
where he teaches Applied Piano, Piano Ensemble, Piano Pedagogy, and Music Theory. Mr. Loring
appears frequently throughout New England as a solo recitalist, collaborative artist,
chamber musician, lecturer, and adjudicator. He has appeared in England, Portugal, Spain,
and Hawaii, on New Hampshire public radio and television and on numerous concert series in
New Hampshire and Massachusetts. He has also appeared in concert at the Crane School of Music,
at Harvard University, at the Addison Gallery of Art, at the Bronson-Hutensky Theater in
Hartford, at Roulette and Symphony Space in New York City, and at Jordan Hall in Boston.
Highlights of recent seasons include performances of two Bach Concertos (on harpsichord),
Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 ("Emperor"), and Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21, K. 467
with the Lakes Region Symphony Orchestra, and Carnival of the Animals with both the
Lakes Region Symphony Orchestra and the New Hampshire Philharmonic. Last season, he appeared
in concert as pianist for the Monadnock Chorus at Carnegie Hall in New York City. In April
1999 he was the pianist for a performance ot the "Trout" Quintet by Franz Schubert with noted
string players, including violinist Adrian Levine of the Academy of St-Martin in the Fields
and the Philharmonia Orchestra, and 'cellist Judith Serkin, daughter of the late pianist
Rudolf Serkin.
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Terry McRoberts
is Professor of Music at Union University
in Jackson, Tennessee, where he teaches private and class piano and related courses.
He serves as coordinator of keyboard studies and of concerts and recitals, as well
as faculty advisor to the Iota Sigma Chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia. He is the editor
of the Tennessee Music Teacher and regularly contributes reviews of new music for Piano
Guild Notes. He performs frequently as a soloist and a collaborative musician, and as a
member of the Jackson Symphony Orchestra. He also serves as director of music/organist
at Forest Heights United Methodist Church. He was a presenter at the International
Conference of The College Music Society in Kyoto, Japan.
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Anne Mayer
is Dye Family Professor of Music Emerita at
Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. She chaired the piano
division and for 14 years was Co-Chair of the Carleton Music
Department. In addition to piano teaching, she taught theory,
piano literature, keyboard harmony, and coached chamber
music. She received her B.A. degree in music from the College
of Wooster in Ohio, where she was the recipient of a Presser
Scholarship and the Pi Kappa Lambda Prize in Music. Her M.M.
degree in piano and music literature is from the Eastman School
of Music and she spent a year in Vienna on a
Fulbright grant in piano. She also studied with Matthay
teachers Frank Mannheimer in Duluth and Hilda Dederich in
London.
She has performed often in the Twin Cities and
Duluth and given recitals at many colleges, conferences,
on educational television and National Public Radio. She has
also performed in various chamber ensembles and accompanied
numerous instrumentalists and vocalists in concerts and
recordings, including some professional accompanying for
Columbia Artists. She has been a prize winner in several
young artist competitions and she judges area competitions. She
has also lectured and taught master classes and workshops.
Ms. Mayer is a performing member of the Thursday Musical
and the Mannheimer Piano Festivals. She has served on the
Education Advisory Board of the National Piano Foundation and
as an officer of the College Music Society, and has published
articles for both organizations.
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John T. O'Brien
earned his Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from Baylor University, and did advanced study at the Academy
for Music and Dramatic Arts in Vienna. He retired in July 1998 as Associate Professor of Music at Columbus
State University, where he taught piano performance and directed the Graduate and Undergraduate Degree Programs in
Piano Pedagogy. Formerly, he was director of Teacher Training at the New School for Music Study in Princeton,
New Jersey. He also served as a consultant to the Frances Clark Library for Piano Students for a period of over ten years.
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Janice Larson Razaq
studied for several summers while in high
school and college with Frank Mannheimer in Duluth, Minnesota,
and received her Bachelor of Music Degree with Distinction from
the Eastman School of Music as a student of Cécile
Genhart. A Fulbright Grant enabled her to study for three years
at the Royal Academy of Music in London with Hilda Dederich.
While in Europe, she was a medal winner in the Canals
International Competition in Barcelona, Spain, and the Viotti
International Competition in Vercelli, Italy. Her London debut
at Wigmore Hall received excellent reviews.
Mrs. Razaq also holds a Master of Music Degree from the University
of Illinois and has concertized extensively in the Midwest, including
performances on the "Live from Landmark" series on Minnesota
Public Radio and on the Dame Myra Hess Concert Series from the
Chicago Public Library, broadcast live on WFMT. She has been
a featured pianist with the Mannheimer Piano Festival at the
University of Minnesota in Duluth several times, and portions
of one of her recitals were later broadcast on Minnesota Public Radio.
Her performance of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue with the Elgin
Symphony Orchestra was acclaimed by critics as "powerful and
dazzling." She is active as an adjudicator, and recently
judged the international preliminaries and finals of the Grace Welsh
Piano Competition. She has played chamber
music recitals with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra,
and was a featured soloist at Stringfest 1998 at Illinois State
University. Recent appearances include a July 1999 performance
with the Lake Superior Chamber Orchestra in Duluth.
Mrs. Razaq is a member of the Harper College and Harper Music
Academy piano faculty in Palatine, Illinois. A
past President of the Northwest Suburban Music Teacher’s
Association, she resides with her
family in Algonquin, Illinois, where she maintains a private studio.
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Ann Sears
is 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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Dan Franklin Smith
has appeared as a soloist, chamber musician and vocal
accompanist throughout the U.S. in venues such as the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the
Distinguished Artist Series at the Cleveland Museum, and Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center. He has been acclaimed
for his extreme refinement as an interpreter of Chopin and other Romantic composers. Recently, he returned from
Germany where he performed in the Kurt Weill Zentrum in Dessau and the Lucas Cranach Hof in Wittenberg. He
made his European debut as a solo recitalist to a standing ovation in Sweden's Mariefred Kyrkan in 1997. In September
he released the premiere recording of Kurt Atterberg's Concerto, which he also performed in Sweden in October 1998,
with Arne Johansson conducting the Sofia Orchestra. Svenska Dagbladet described his performance as marked by a
"sensitive ear, strong sense of style and fine musicianship . . .more than anyone could wish for." The performance was also
televised throughout Sweden. Other European engagements have included orchestral appearances in England with the
Bournemouth Sinfonietta, and solo recitals in London, Stockholm, and Leipzig.
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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 is currently the Editor of the Matthay News, a position she has held since 1987.
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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John Williams
received his early training from Ralph Squires at Centenary College,
and he later worked with Jack Roberts, Jean Mainous, and Silvio Scionti at the University of North Texas. He studied
with Frank Mannheimer in Duluth, Minnesota, from 1962 until 1971, and he attended Denise Lassimonne's summer class
in Buriton, England in 1975. He has been a piano faculty member at Southwest Texas State University, The University of
South Dakota, and since 1968 at the University of South Carolina. His repertory includes the Goldberg Variations, the late
sonatas of
Beethoven, the Chopin Etudes, and several concerti. He has restored an 1862 Erard piano which has been in several recital
performances, including the MTNA National Convention.
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