Eastside MTA

Monthly Programs & Workshops

Monthly programs will be held in person at Newport Covenant Church for the 2024-2025 school year.  Workshops will be held from 10:30 – 12:30, program speakers will be held from 10:30 – 11:30.

All Eastside MTA Workshops for are free of charge to EMTA members though the Dorothy Woodcock grant. Public is welcome to attend. Registration is required. The fee for the Workshops to nonmembers is $20 per workshop with the option to purchase a workshop pass for any three for $50.

2023-2024 Season

Eastside MTA Monthly Programs are presented each month by knowledgeable speakers at the general meetings. 

Eastside MTA workshops

Eastside MTA

Eastside MTA Workshops are presented to provide teachers an opportunity for continuing education. Workshops will be both in person and online.

Spencer Myer

Spencer Myer is associate professor of music in piano at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Lauded for “superb playing” and “poised, alert musicianship” by the Boston Globe and labeled “definitely a man to watch” by London’s The Independent, he is one of the most respected and sought-after artists on today’s concert stage.  

Myer’s orchestral, recital and chamber music performances have been heard throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Africa and Asia. He has been soloist with The Cleveland Orchestra, the Boise, Dayton, Rhode Island, Cape Town, Johannesburg and Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestras, Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston, the Baton Rouge, Indianapolis, Knoxville, New Haven, Omaha, Phoenix, Santa Fe and Tucson Symphony Orchestras, Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, Mexico’s Orquesta Filarmónica de Jalisco and Beijing’s China National Symphony Orchestra, collaborating with, among others, conductors Michael Christie, Leslie B. Dunner, Arthur Fagen, Robert Franz, Bernhard Gueller, Jacques Lacombe, Jahja Ling, Timothy Muffitt, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Kevin Rhodes, Lucas Richman, Steven Smith, Thomas Wilkins and Victor Yampolsky.

His 2005 recital/orchestral tour of South Africa included a performance of the five piano concerti of Beethoven with the Chamber Orchestra of South Africa, followed by six return orchestra and recital tours. Myer’s recital appearances have been presented in New York City’s Weill Recital Hall, 92nd Street Y and Steinway Hall, Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center and London’s Wigmore Hall, while many of his performances have been broadcast on WQXR (New York City), WHYY (Philadelphia), WCLV (Cleveland) and WFMT (Chicago). An in-demand chamber musician, he has appeared numerous summers at the Lev Aronson Legacy Festival in Dallas with cellists Lynn Harrell, Ralph Kirshbaum, Amit Peled and Brian Thornton, and has enjoyed a recurring partnership for over a decade with the Miami String Quartet at the Kent/Blossom Music Festival. Other artistic partners have included clarinetist David Shifrin, sopranos Nicole Cabell, Martha Guth and Erin Wall, the Jupiter and Pacifica String Quartets and the Dorian Wind Quintet.  Myer’s career was launched with three important prizes: First Prize in the 2004 UNISA International Piano Competition in South Africa, the 2006 Christel DeHaan Classical Fellowship from the American Pianists Association and the Gold Medal from the 2008 New Orleans International Piano Competition.

He is also a laureate of the 2007 William Kapell, 2005 Cleveland and 2005 Busoni International Piano Competitions. He enjoys an esteemed reputation as a vocal collaborator since winning the 2000 Marilyn Horne Foundation Competition. He was a member of Astral Artists’ performance roster from 2003 to 2010. Previously, Myer served as guest faculty at the Oberlin and Baldwin-Wallace Conservatories of Music and was a member of the Piano Faculty of Boston’s Longy School of Music of Bard College from 2016 to 2022. He currently serves on the Board of New York’s Musicians Foundation and Brooklyn Art Song Society. Myer’s debut CD for the harmonia mundi usa label, solo music of Busoni, Copland, Debussy and Kohs, was released in the fall of 2007 to critical acclaim by Fanfare and Gramophone magazines. He has released five recordings on the Steinway & Sons label since 2017: Piano Rags of William Bolcom, three discs with cellist Brian Thornton encompassing cello/piano repertoire of Brahms, Debussy and Schumann, and most recently, Chopin’s Four Impromptus. He is a Steinway Artist.

Mikhael Voskresensky

Mikhael Voskresensky commands an international reputation as a pianist in the great Romantic tradition. He is a prizewinner of four international piano competitions (Schumann in Berlin, Rio de Janeiro, George Enescu in Bucharest, and Van Cliburn in Fort Worth, TX). In 1966 he was honored with the Merited Artist of Russia award and in 1989, the People’s Artist of Russia.   

Mikhail Voskresensky has extensive concert experience and is the only pianist in Russia to perform all of Chopin’s piano compositions during one concert season; this in 1982/ 83, in nine recitals in the Maly Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire. In 1957 the young Pianist took part in the Prague Spring Festival where he performed European premiere of Shostakovich Second Piano concerto with the presence of Shostakovich himself.

Mikhail Voskresensky is a distinguished professor at the Moscow Conservatory, the chair of the professorship of piano faculty. His pupils have won 126 international prizes including 55 gold medals. Mikhail Voskresensky is President of the Scriabin International Society and Guest Professor in the Toho Gakuen School in Tokyo.  

Although Mr. Voskresensky devotes many of his efforts to teaching and giving master classes in various countries his primary purpose is to be performing. Voskresensky has recorded more than 50 CD’s including a box set of all Mozart Piano Concertos (2013) and a 5CD set (2015) of all Mozart Piano Sonatas.  In June of 2022, Voskresensky left Russia with his family as a protest against the war in Ukraine. In August of the same year, he immigrated to the US.  

Cathy Kautsky

Cathy Kautsky, whose students have won prizes across the country and gone on to leading graduate programs, has taught at Lawrence University Conservatory of Music since 1987, with a 6 -year hiatus as piano faculty and chair of the Keyboard Dept. at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Known for her cross-disciplinary interests, she was awarded the Arts Institute Creative Arts Award at UW-Madison and has presented frequently at national conferences on such topics as “On the Trail of Chopin and George Sand,” “WWI: A Centenary Look at the Musical Wars, “ and “Celebrating Debussy and the Arts du Spectacle.” Her articles have appeared in Clavier Companion, American Music Teacher, and International Piano, and her book, Debussy’s Paris: Piano Portraits of the Belle Epoque, was published by Rowman&Littlefield in September 2017. Reviewed by Booklist as “a fascinating fusion of music, literature, and social history,” it has won accolades from eminent pianists across the country.

Dr. Kautsky is currently engaged in creating a 24 video set, “Great Works for the Piano” for Great Courses/The Teaching Company. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the New England Conservatory, a master’s from the Juilliard School, and a doctorate from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Jocelyn Swigger

Pianist Jocelyn Swigger is Professor of Music at Gettysburg College Sunderman Conservatory and on the piano faculty of Interlochen Arts Camp. “An hour of pure musical pleasure” was a Blogcritics revew of her album of the complete Chopin etudes, recorded with original ornaments on an 1841 Paris Erard piano that was tuned to a historically informed temperament devised especially for Chopin. She is currently obsessed with the music of late Romantic Czech composer Agnes Tyrrell; other passions include studying Alexander Technique and yoga and jamming with her pre-teen drummer son. She can be heard on Con Brio Recordings and Centaur Records, and her TEDx talk, How I Memorize Piano Music, is on YouTube. Jocelyn hosts two very occasional podcasts: Play It Again Swig (an audio practice diary) and Just Piano Improv. Jocelyn serves as Judge of Elections in her local precinct, and encourages you to vote in every local election. Website: jocelynswigger.com

Dr. Yimo Zhang

Dr. Yimo Zhang has been studying the piano from an early age. She completed her DMA in piano performance in 2020 from the University of Washington, under the tutelage of Dr. Robin McCabe, writing her dissertation on repertoire choices for intermediate-level piano students. She gained her teaching experience as a teaching assistant during her doctorate study, and through her private teaching experiences during and after graduate school. Her passion and dedication in learning about the art of piano playing has led her to study with Dr. Tamás Ungár at Texas Christian University and Eugene and Elisabeth Pridonoff at the University of Cincinnati.

In China Dr. Zhang studied in the prestigious Middle School Attached to the Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing, from age 9. Besides rigorous training in building a solid foundation for solo playing, she has enjoyed working with composition major students in performing their works and collaboration with other instrumentalists. She was selected as one of three students to tour Taipei with her studio teacher in 2006, and performed as a soloist at Taipei University, among other venues. In the summer of 2019, Yimo attended the International Baroque Academy, where she performed solo and accompaniment harpsichord works with singers in cathedrals in Germany and Austria.

Yimo’s interest in contemporary music and working with composers has led her to study with pianist and composer Paul Schoenfield on his piano music “Peccadilloes” at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. With the Modern Music Ensemble at UW, she performed the West Coast premiere of Steve Reich’s Radio Rewrite in 2016, at Meany Hall, in celebration of the composer’s 80th birthday. Dr. Zhang started her own piano studio in 2023. Her students have won Gold, Silver and Bronze medals (Seattle Bach Festival, Russian Piano Festival/Competition, Spokane Piano Competition, Pacific NW Piano Competition) in the Pacific Northwest region. Besides teaching and playing music, Dr. Zhang also serves as adjudicator and presenter locally and statewide.

Eastside MTA workshops

REGISTRATION

All Eastside MTA Workshops for  are free of charge to EMTA members though the Dorothy Woodcock grant. Public is welcome to attend. Registration is required. The fee for the Workshops to nonmembers is $20 per workshop with the option to purchase a workshop pass for all three for $50.

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Eastside Music Teachers Association serves music teachers who live or work on the Eastside.  Looking to connect with fellow teachers? Looking for continuing teacher education? Looking for events at all levels for your students?
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