Terry McRoberts
is the current 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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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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Aiko Onishi
was born in Tokyo and began her piano studies with her mother,
Teiko,
an accomplished pianist and a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music. After winning
a Japanese national competition,
she was invited to study at the Eastman School of Music with Cécile Staub Genhart, with whom she
credits her foundation as a pianist. After
earning her B.M. with Distinction, Performer's Certificate, and Artist's Diploma, she
continued to study with
Frank Mannheimer, with
whom she worked extensively over the next sixteen years. During the winter of 1964-65, she had
the privilege of studying with
Dame Myra Hess in London. Miss Onishi has concertized and given lectures in over 60 cities in
the United States and she has played in all
of the major cities in Japan. For six years she was a professor at the Toho School of Music
in Japan and for twenty-one years she served on
the faculty of San Jose State University in California. During those years she produced many
outstanding students, some of whom have
won prizes at international competitions including the Leeds, Busoni, Casadesus, Kapell,
Chopin, Munich, University of Maryland and the
Washington International Bach Competition. She is the author of Pianism, a highly
acclaimed pedagogical work, which is available at
www.pianism.com.
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Mary Pendleton
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
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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Richard Reber
is Professor of Piano at the University of Kansas,
where he has taught piano and piano literature since 1964. He is a graduate of the
Eastman School of Music, where he studied piano with Cécile Staub Genhart. In 1962
he received a Fulbright Scholarship for study at the Academy of Music in Vienna, Austria.
He furthered his studies with Frank Mannheimer and in 1973 became a
founding member of the Mannheimer Piano Festival Association. Mr. Reber is an active
recitalist and is recognized as an outstanding lecture-recitalist in the field of twentieth-century
piano music as well as the traditional repertoire. He presents recitals,
lecture-recitals, and workshops throughout the United States and recently lectured and
performed in Japan. His orchestral appearances include the premieres of two concertos,
and he has performed with the Dorian Wind Quintet. Mr. Reber has received numerous research
grants from the University of Kansas. His recording of intermediate level twentieth-century
piano music, entitled Kanzona, was the result of one such grant.
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Neil Rutman
has distinguished himself as a top prize winner in several
international
competitions including the Busoni, Kapell, Casadesus, Joanna Hodges, Concert Artist Guild,
and International Johann
Sebastian Bach Competition. Mr. Rutman has received awards from the National Endowment for
the Arts and a grant
for Artistic Excellence from the Astral Foundation. He has appeared in Carnegie Hall, Alice
Tully Hall, Queen Elizabeth
Hall, and Tokyo's Bunka Kaikan. He has recorded two Mozart Piano Concerti on the ASV label
and an all-Poulenc CD,
with Emmy-Award-winning actor, Tony Randall providing the narration for The Story of Babar
the Little Elephant.
The Washington Post has written that his playing "met the highest standards and his
spotless articulation gave the whole
program unusual polish and virtuoso marks," and recently the New York Times stated
that "he won the audience over for
himself with exquisite performancesboth commanding and full of character." A native of
California, Mr. Rutman has studied extensively with Aiko Onishi
and he holds the Master of Music degree from the Eastman School of Music, where he studied
with Cécile Staub Genhart. He also holds a D.M.A. from the Peabody Conservatory. Currently
Artist-in-Residence at the University of Central Arkansas, in 1999 Mr. Rutman gave 64
narrated concerts throughout the state to the children
of the Arkansas public schools. A former collegiate boxer with an
amateur record of 6-0, he also
coaches the University of Central Arkansas Boxing Club.
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Ann Sears
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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Stephen Siek
is a past President of the American Matthay Association and
has recently completed Marley's Host: The Life and Teachings of Tobias Matthay, to be published
soon.
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 and the
Piano
Quarterly, 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 second edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians,
and
other recent articles include pieces for the American Musical Instrument Society
Journal
and Symposium, the journal of the College Music Society. His 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. 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. He currently serves on the
faculty of Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio.
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Dan Franklin Smith
is the current Vice-President of the Association. He
recently returned from Germany where he performed in, among other
venues, Kurt Weill Zentrum in Dessau and the Lucas Cranach Hof in Wittenberg.
As a solo recitalist, he made his European debut at Mariefred Kyrkan in Sweden in 1997, where he received a standing ovation and was
hailed by the reviewer as "unequivocally one of the most brilliant pianists I have had the pleasure of hearing and reviewing!"
Mr. Smith's debut recording of the Kurt Atterberg Concerto (a premiere recording) was released in September. He offered this work for
his Swedish orchestral debut in October of 1998, with Maestro 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,
the concerto, and Mr. Smith were featured on SVT's Musikspegeln, which was broadcast throughout Sweden soon afterwards.
Other European engagements have included Oslo and Paris. His 1999-2000 schedule features orchestral appearances in England with the
Bournemouth Sinfonietta and with the Sofia Orchestra in Stockholm, in addition to recitals in London, Stockholm and Leipzig.
In the United States he has appeared as a soloist, chamber musician and vocal accompanist at such venues as the National Gallery in
Washington, D.C., the Cleveland Museum's Distinguished Artist Series, and Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City.
In the 1999-2000 season he will perform solo recitals in Maryland, Ohio, New Jersey, Virginia, California and New York. This fall he will
also perform the Robert Schumann Piano Concerto with Maestro Jean-Pierre Schmitt and the Lawyers Orchestra in NYC.
Mr. Smith's work as a solo artist has been described as "breathtakingly beautiful . . . . The dazzling, agile finger work left the
audience in utter awe of Smith's technical skill and beauty of tone . . . . His quiet sincere and straight forward manner relies on an economy of
movement and energy which allows him introspection into the core of the music." He currently resides in New York City.
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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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Paul Weeren
is a Friend of the American Matthay Association.
He is a Dutch harpsichordist and pianist living in Geldrop, a village near Eindhoven in The Netherlands. He received
his training at the Conservatories of Tilburg and Alkmaar, where he studied the recorder, harpsichord, piano, and
performance practice. He has also studied extensively with Bob Brouwer, a student of Christiaan Grootveld, who
was trained by Matthay. Mr. Weeren has specialized in teaching the piano according to
Matthay principles, and he currently teaches at the Tilburgse Dans- en Muziekschool and in his studio in Geldrop. As a concert
artist he plays regularly with ensembles specializing in early performance practice and as a soloist he
frequently performs throughout
Europe. He has also recently completed some radio-recordings, and he has contributed articles about music and teaching to
Het Clavecimbel (a harpsichord magazine) and the EPTA-Nederland Pianobulletin.
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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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Gary Wolf
is a former President of the American Matthay Association and is a frequent
recitalist and ensemble musician who performs throughout the
United States and Europe. Major cities where he has been heard include New York,
Toronto, Edinburgh, Amsterdam, Salzburg, Brussels, and Merida. He frequently conducts
workshops, master classes and clinics at numerous colleges and universities.
Dr. Wolf holds the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Eastman School of Music
where his piano study was with Cécile Staub Genhart. He previously studied with Gordon
Terwilliger and Adrian Pouliot at Wichita State University and also with Kurt Neumuller as
a Fulbright Scholar at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria. He is active in many
professional organizations and has taught many award-winning students. Dr. Wolf holds
the rank of Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of Central Florida.
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