Pianist Christopher Harding maintains a flourishing international performance career, generating acclaim and impressing audiences and critics alike with his substantive interpretations and pianistic mastery. He has given frequent solo, concerto, and chamber music performances in venues as far flung as the Kennedy Center and Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., Suntory Hall in Tokyo, the National Theater Concert Hall in Taipei, the Jack Singer Concert Hall in Calgary, and halls and festival appearances in Newfoundland, Israel, Romania, and China. His concerto performances have included concerts with the National Symphony and the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestras, the San Angelo and Santa Barbara Symphonies, and the Tokyo City Philharmonic, working with such conductors as Andrew Sewell, Eric Zhou, Taijiro Iimori, Gisele Ben-Dor, Fabio Machetti, Randall Craig Fleisher, John DeMain, Ron Spiegelman, Daniel Alcott, and Darryl One, among others. His chamber music and duo collaborations have included internationally renowned artists such as clarinetist Karl Leister, flautist Andras Adorjan, and members of the St. Lawrence and Ying String Quartets, in addition to frequent projects with his distinguished faculty colleagues at the University of Michigan. He has recorded solo and chamber music CDs for the Equilibrium and Brevard Classics labels. He has additionally edited and published critical editions and recordings of works by Claude Debussy (Children's Corner, Arabesques and shorter works) and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Viennese Sonatinas) for the Schirmer Performance Editions published by Hal Leonard.
Logan Skelton
Professor of Piano
lskelton@umich.edu
734-647-6294
Office: 3010 Moore
Education
B.Mus. (Piano Performance) Loyola University
M.Mus. (Piano Performance and Literature) Eastman School of Music
D.M.A. (Piano Performance) Manhattan School of Music
Logan Skelton is a much sought after pianist, teacher, and composer whose work has received international critical acclaim. As a performer, Skelton has concertized widely in the United States, Europe, and Asia and has been featured on many public radio and television stations including NPR's Audiophile Audition, Performance Today, All Things Considered, and Morning Edition, as well as on radio in China and national television in Romania. He has recorded numerous discs for Centaur, Albany, Crystal, Blue Griffin, and Naxos Records, the latter on which he performed on two pianos with fellow composer-pianist William Bolcom. A frequent guest at music festivals, Skelton regularly appears in such settings as Gina Bachauer; Amalfi Coast; Gijón; Eastman; Tunghai; Chautauqua Institution; American Romanian; Eastern; New Orleans; Poland International; Indiana University; Hilton Head Island; and the Prague International Piano Masterclasses. He is a popular presenter at music teacher organizations including numerous appearances at MTNA national conventions and EPTA World Piano Conferences, as well as serving as convention artist for state conventions in New York, Illinois, Michigan, Louisiana, North Carolina, Wyoming, and Iowa. Moreover, he has given countless performances and masterclasses at colleges, conservatories, and conferences throughout the U.S., South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, China, Italy, Romania, Serbia, Poland, and Czech Republic. He is a frequent juror for international piano competitions. His Centaur Records compact disc, of all 20th century American solo piano music, is titled American Grab Bag: Piano Music of Our Time. American Record Guide described this as a "fascinating recording," commenting on Skelton's "superb, wonderfully subtle and elegant playing ... Bravo!"
As a composer, Skelton has a special affinity for art song, having composed well over a hundred songs, including numerous song cycles. Critics have noted the close fusion of text and music in Skelton's songs, how words are "... illuminated with brilliance and deep emotional power," American Record Guide. Others have found "... joy-a night unto ecstatic joy... in word and sound-play," Dial M for Musicology. In Fanfare magazine reviews, Skelton as a composer of song has been singled out for his ability to "... plumb the depths of emotion ... these are exquisitely crafted art songs in the American tradition ... we are in the hands of someone who lives and breathes song." His works have been performed throughout the world by a variety of musicians in settings such as Carnegie Recital Hall and Merkin Concert Hall in New York City, Tblisi in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, Australia, Sorrento, Italy, as well as numerous cities throughout the United States including Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Tampa, New Orleans, Lincoln, Houston, Detroit, and many others. He composed the required work for the 1993 New Orleans International Piano Competition. His song cycle Anderson Songs: The Islander, was a recipient of the Music Composition Award from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters.
Professor Skelton's principal teachers have included John Murphy, Rebecca Penneys, Lillian Freundlich, and Artur Balsam. A devoted teacher himself, his own piano students have repeatedly won awards in many national and international competitions including Hilton Head; San Antonio; Cincinnati World; Washington; Bartók-Kabalevsky-Prokofieff; Fischoff; Jacob Flier; Iowa; Frinna Awerbuch; Eastman; Crescendo; Dallas Chamber; Missouri Southern; Los Angeles Liszt; Wideman; Concorso Internazionale di Esecuzione Musicale; Schimmel, Liszt-Garrison; Grieg Festival; Del Rosario; Beethoven Sonata; Ithaca; Piano Arts; Heida Hermanns; Dubois; Schmidbauer; Peabody Mason; Janáček; Seattle; Kingsville; New York; Oberlin; Idyllwild; as well as numerous Music Teachers National Association competitions. His former students hold positions of prominence in music schools and conservatories throughout the world. He was honored by the University of Michigan as the recipient of the prestigious Harold Haugh Award for excellence in studio teaching. He has served on the faculties of Manhattan School of Music, Missouri State University, and is currently professor of Piano and director of Doctoral Studies in Piano Performance at U-M.
Louis Nagel
Professor of Piano
julou@umich.edu
734-764-2511
Office: 3038 Moore
Louis Nagel combines an active concert and teaching schedule and is noted for his lecture-recitals by musicians and non-musicians alike. He has performed in highly acclaimed solo recitals and concerto concerts in major American and European cities. He has taught at the Interlochen Arts Camp, International Music Camp in Poland, Adamant Music School, and the Amalfi Coast Music Festival in Italy. He is the director of the School of Music, Theatre and Dance Outreach Program, advisor to the Bachelor of Musical Arts Degree program, the Interim Piano Department Chair, and has been on the faculty since 1969.
Professor Nagel is a sought-after presenter at state and national conferences with lecture-recitals at National Music Teachers' Association conventions in Dallas, Washington, D.C., and Salt Lake City. He is often invited as a state convention artist and has appeared in other forums throughout the United States. He is a member and former board member of the American Liszt Society and often performs at its annual festivals including the Great Romantics Festival at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
Louis Nagel has collaborated with his wife, psychologist, psychoanalyst and musician, Dr. Julie Jaffee Nagel, at the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute and the American Psychoanalytic Association. Professor Nagel is a Steinway artist, and has performed in Steinway Hall in New York as well as numerous times for the Steinway music stores in Michigan. He has recorded Four Centuries of J. S. Bach for Equilibrium, Music of C.P.E. Bach and Joseph Haydn for Block M.
His three degrees from The Juilliard School include studies with Rosina Lhevinne, Josef Raieff, and Joseph Bloch. Subsequent to his studies at The Juilliard School was a summer of coaching with Vladimir Ashkenazy.
Recent performances have included Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition in Florence, Italy and four programs devoted to the piano sonatas of Schubert at Kerrytown. In March he will be presenting a program on the French Suites of Bach at the Music Teachers National Association National Convention in New York.
Arthur Greene
Professor of Piano
agreene@umich.edu
734-764-5569
Office: 3060 Moore
Education:
B.A., Yale Univ.
M.Mus., Juilliard School of Music, Theatre & Dance
D.M.A., SUNY-Stony Brook
Born in New York, Arthur Greene studied at Juilliard with Martin Canin. Greene was a Gold Medal winner in the William Kapell and Gina Bachauer International Piano Competitions, and a top laureate at the Busoni International Competition. He performed the complete solo piano works of Johannes Brahms in a series of six programs in Boston, and recorded the Complete Etudes of Alexander Scriabin for Supraphon. He has performed the 10 Sonata Cycle of Alexander Scriabin in many important international venues, including multi-media presentations with Symbolist artworks. He has made many recordings together with his wife, the violinist Solomia Soroka, for Naxos and Toccata Classics, including the Violin-Piano Sonatas of William Bolcom. His current projects include recordings of the Scriabin sonatas, and of previously unrecorded works of the Ukrainian national composer Mykola Lysenko, and performances of the last three Beethoven sonatas in the spring of 2014.
Greene has performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the San Francisco, Utah, and National Symphonies, the Czech National Symphony, the Tokyo Symphony, and many others. He has played recitals in Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Moscow Rachmaninov Hall, Tokyo Bunka Kaikan, Lisbon Sao Paulo Opera House, Hong Kong City Hall and concert houses in Shanghai and Beijing. He toured Japan and Korea many times. He was an Artistic Ambassador to Serbia, Kosovo, and Bosnia for the United States Information Agency.
Greene has been on the faculty at the School since 1990. He has won the Harold Haugh Award for Excellence in Studio Teaching. His current and former students include prizewinners in international competitions, and his former students hold important teaching posts throughout the United States.
John Ellis
Associate Dean for Productions, Programs and Partnerships and Associate Professor of Music
jsellis@umich.edu
734-763-1278
Office: 2304 Moore
Education:
B.Mus., Crane School of Music (SUNY-Potsdam)
M.Mus., Indiana Univ.
D.M.A., Manhattan School of Music
John Ellis is the Director of Graduate Studies in Piano Pedagogy, administers the community and preparatory programs and the class piano curriculum. He is in demand, nationally and internationally, as a master class clinician, adjudicator and lecturer on piano pedagogy. His recent travels have taken him to the University of South Florida, the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland, and Hawaii. Professor Ellis speaks regularly on pedagogy topics to teachers groups throughout Michigan. As a pianist, he has performed as soloist, lecture-recitalist, and collaborative artist in New York City (Weill Recital Hall, Steinway Hall), Rutgers University, SUNY Purchase, Notre Dame University, Montclair Museum of Art, the University of Helsinki and the Sibelius Academy (Finland), and Freiburg in Breisgau (Germany). He has recorded the piano music of Arthur Cunningham.
As a scholar in the field of pedagogy, Professor Ellis combines music theory, musicology, and the humanities with the more traditional pedagogical methods. His article on the piano method of Marguerite Long appeared in American Music Teacher in 2013. He has worked with the Musical Signification Project of the International Congress on Musical Signification (ICMS) since 1996, presenting papers on musical meaning and pedagogy at the University of Bologna, the Université de Provence, the University of Helsinki, and the New England Conference of Music Theorists at Wellesley College. His articles have been published by CLUEB (Bologna)/International Semiotics Institute (Finland), and Acta Semiotica Fennica. He has presented his research at the conferences of the Music Teachers National Association and the National Conference of Keyboard Pedagogy.
His primary teachers were Mr. Cunningham, Frank Iogha, Michel Block, and Constance Keene. Prior to coming to Michigan, he served on the faculties of the Manhattan School of Music and the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music. He has taught on the piano faculty of the University of Michigan All-State program at Interlochen and coordinated the piano program at the U-M Summer Arts Institute.
Penelope Crawford
Lecturer of Fortepiano
fortepno@umich.edu
Internationally acclaimed as one of America's master performers on historical keyboard instruments, Penelope Crawford has appeared as soloist with modern and period instrument orchestras, and as recitalist and chamber musician on major North American concert series. From 1975 to 1990 she was harpsichordist and fortepianist with the Ars Musica Baroque Orchestra, one of the first period instrument ensembles in North America. Her recordings, which have appeared on the Timegate, Titanic, Wild Boar, Loft, and Musica Omnia labels include major chamber works of Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Schumann with the Atlantis Trio, the Mozart and Beethoven Wind Quintets with the Gambini Winds, and Schubert's two major Lieder cycles, Die Schöne Müllerin and Winterreise with baritone Max van Egmond.Mendelssohn. Her recent recording of Beethoven's last three Piano Sonatas won the 2011 "Record of the Year" Award from Music Web International.
In addition to teaching at the University of Michigan, Crawford served for 25 years on the artist faculty of the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute. She has been involved as artistic director and performer in several important international conferences: Händel's Messiah: History & Performance (1980 Ann Arbor) Michigan MozartFest (1989, Ann Arbor); Schubert's Piano Music (1995, Washington D. C.); and Beyond Notation: The Performance and Pedagogy of Improvisation in Mozart's Music (2002, Ann Arbor). Crawford's performance degrees came from the Eastman School of Music and the University of Michigan, with additional studies in Salzburg and Rome. Her teachers have included Cécile Genhart, Rosina Lhevinne, Guido Agosti, Kurt Neumüller, and Gyorgy Sandor.
An avid collector of historical keyboards, Crawford owns both originals and reproductions of 18th- and 19th-century pianos and harpsichords.
Katherine Collier
Eugene Bossart Collegiate Lecturer of Collaborative Piano
kcollier@umich.edu
734-615-3729
Office: 2316 Moore
Education:
B.Mus., M.Mus., Eastman School of Music
Katherine Collier has had a distinguished and versatile career as a soloist, chamber music artist, and accompanist. After her early training in Texas, she studied piano with Cecile Genhart and accompanying with Brooks Smith. She was awarded unanimously the Performer's Certificate at Eastman.
Professor. Collier was the first prize winner of the National Young Artist's Competition and the Cliburn Scholarship Competition, and was the recipient of a Rockefeller Award. She won a Kemper Educational Grant to study at the Royal College of Music in London, England.
Ms. Collier has been soloist with orchestras in Cincinnati, Dallas, and Eastman-Rochester, and Houston, and is an active collaborator with many renowned musicians including Joshua Bell, Hilary Hahn, Ani Kavafian, Cho-Liang Lin, Andres Cardenes, Erling Bengtsson, David Shifrin, and members of the Tokyo, Emerson, Cleveland, Orion, Vermeer, Miami, Shanghai, and Ying Quartets.
She has performed around the world and appeared at recital halls in Europe such as Wigmore Hall and the Purcell Room (Southbank) in London, the Concertgebouw, the Brahms-Saal, and the Konzertsaal der Staatlichen Hochschule für Musik. She has presented concerts at Merkin Hall, the Phillips Collection, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Dame Myra Hess Series in Chicago, and the Y Music Society in Pittsburgh. She performs at the Aspen Music Festival, Interlochen, Meadowmount, and Skaneateles. As an accompanist, Ms. Collier worked in the studios of Dorothy Delay at Aspen and Nathan Milstein and the BBC in London.
Ms. Collier tours extensively with her husband, violist Yizhak Schotten. They are founders and music directors of the Maui Classical Music Festival in Hawaii and music directors of the Strings in the Mountains Festival in Steamboat Springs. Ms. Collier appears with her husband on four compact discs on Crystal Records and has recorded with other artists on the Pandora, Pearl, Crystal, and Centaur labels. Ms. Collier previously taught at the universities of Washington, Northern Kentucky, and Wyoming.
Kelley Benson
Lecturer of Piano Pedagogy
saavikam@umich.edu
734-647-4301
Office: 2011 Moore
Education:
B.Mus., Northwestern Univ.
M.Mus., Univ. of Michigan
Kelley Benson has been a lecturer and coordinated the Piano Pedagogy Laboratory Program since 1985. A native of East Lansing, Michigan, she was a semi-finalist in the Michigan Young Artists Competition. Ms. Benson is experienced as both teacher and accompanist.
