Piano Master Class, presented by Seymour Bernstein
Tuesday, April 5, 9:15–10:45 A.M.
Seymour Bernstein, NCTM, was honored at the 2015 MTNA National Conference with the MTNA-Frances Clark Keyboard Pedagogy Award for his book With Your Own Two Hands: Self Discovery Through Music. He has been teaching piano since age 15 and won the Griffith Artist Award at age 17. His long, exceptional concert career took him to Asia, Europe and throughout the Americas. He has studied with such notable musicians as Alexander Brailowsky, Sir Clifford Curzon, Jan Gorbaty, Nadia Boulanger and Georges Enesco. He made his debut in 1969 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, playing the world premiere of Concerto No. 2 by Villa–Lobos. Bernstein won the First Prize and Prix Jacques Durand at Fontainebleau, the National Federation of Music Clubs Award for Furthering American Music Abroad, a Beebe Foundation grant, two Martha Baird Rockefeller grants and four State Department grants.
Always valuing teaching, Bernstein made a point of offering master classes and lecture recitals wherever his concert tours took him. He is on the piano faculty at NYU Steinhardt and also maintains a private studio in New York City. He is a prolific composer, with compositions ranging from teaching material for students to sophisticated concert pieces. He continues to perform as a guest artist with chamber ensembles, and serves regularly on the juries of a number of international competitions.
A documentary on Bernstein, Seymour: An Introduction, which was directed by actor Ethan Hawke, was released last year. Along with With Your Own Two Hands, Bernstein has also written 20 Lessons in Keyboard Choreography, Monsters and Angels: Surviving a Career in Music, and Chopin: Interpreting His Notational Symbols.
Intermediate Piano Master Class
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Intermediate Piano Master Class
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 An independent piano teacher for many years, Bruce Berr has also served on the faculties of numerous institutions, including Washington University in St. Louis and Roosevelt University in Chicago where he taught piano and was coordinator of piano pedagogy for 13 years. He is now a member of the full-time faculty of the Chicago College of Performing Arts, where he teaches musicianship and pedagogy. His articles on music and piano teaching have appeared in the major keyboard journals, and he has been associate editor for Keyboard Companion and Clavier Companion magazine since 1997. His highly popular column on personal observations, “ad lib,” appears regularly on the last page of American Music Teacher. Berr is also a composer and arranger of educational piano music. He served as a consultant, composer and clinician for Hal Leonard Publishing Corporation’s piano method series for children. His most recent publication is Barcarolle Impromptu. Hal Leonard also distributes his arrangements of Chanukah and Passover holiday music, as well as several arrangements of patriotic duets for young pianists. Berr received his degrees in piano and pedagogy from Washington University in St. Louis, and Northwestern University. |
 Barbara Fast, NCTM, is Frieda Derdeyn Professor of Piano and Piano Area Chair at the University of Oklahoma and also the president of the Oklahoma Music Teachers Association. At OU, she coordinates the group piano program and teaches graduate and undergraduate piano pedagogy. She has received numerous awards honoring her teaching, including: 2014 University of Oklahoma Regents Award for Superior Teaching; 2013 Oklahoma MTA Teacher of the Year; MTNA Collegiate Chapter Advisor of the Year 2007 and 2009; 2008 Irene and Julian Rothbaum Presidential Professor of Excellence in the Arts at the University of Oklahoma. Fast co-founded the National Group Piano/Piano Pedagogy Forum held for the first time in 2000, with the eighth GP3 forum completed in 2014. She has served on the Editorial Committee of the MTNA e-Journal, and as associate editor of Piano Pedagogy Forum, the first online keyboard journal. She has presented numerous workshops on practicing, sight-reading, ensemble music, technology, newly published music and historical keyboard pedagogy at many conferences. She has served on numerous national and state MTNA and NCKP piano pedagogy-related positions. |