Educational Background
BA, Yale University (2008)
MM, New England Conservatory of Music (2012)
DMA, The Juilliard School (2015)

 

Winner of music and literary prizes from Yale, Juilliard, and Tanglewood, pianist Bretton Brown has appeared in recital in such venues as Merkin Hall, the Musée Jacquemart-André (Paris), and the Dallas Museum of Art, in addition to performances in Alice Tully Hall, the Neumarkt Reitstadel, and New York's Symphony Space.

 

Brown helped prepare the American premiere of George Benjamin’s opera Written on Skin and subsequently assisted in the Canadian premiere of that work with original cast members Barbara Hannigan and Christopher Purves and the Toronto Symphony, at the invitation of the composer. He has recorded for Sirius XM, WQXR, and the Bayerischer Rundfunk, and has appeared in recital with Tine Thing Helseth at Shriver Hall, the Apple Store SoHo, and Le Poisson Rouge.

 

Passionate about arts advocacy, Brown has given outreach performances with the Baltimore Symphony’s OrchKids Program and has helped lead a week-long residency in Lander, Wyoming, bringing classical music to local middle-school students. The Kentucky native holds a bachelor's degree with distinction from Yale, a master's degree with academic honors from NEC, and a doctorate from the Juilliard School, where his dissertation on Gustav Holst, "Hearing the Music of The Planets," was awarded the Richard F. French Prize.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Educational Background
Bachelor of Music, University of Cincinnati (1994)
Master of Music, University of Cincinnati (1996)
Doctor of Musical Arts, University of Cincinnati (2001)

 

In addition to teaching piano pedagogy and class piano, Andrea McAlister coordinates the class piano program and the secondary piano studies program. She earned her DMA at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, where she held a teaching assistantship and graduated summa cum laude. 

 

McAlister’s research in piano pedagogy, technology, motivation, and neural development has been featured at national and international conferences, and she is active as a clinician for state and local teachers. Recent presentations have been heard at the International Society of Music Education Conference, the Music Teachers National Association Conferences, the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy, the World Piano Pedagogy Conference, the Group Piano and Piano Pedagogy Seminar, the International Conference on Sociology in Music Education, the Piano Wellness Seminar, the International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies, and the International Technology, Education, and Development Conference.

 

McAlister’s research has also been featured in the Music Teachers National Association’s American Music Teacher, the MTNA e-journal, the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy’s Proceedings, and Clavier Companion and Keyboard Companion.

 

As a performer, McAlister has appeared in festivals and recitals throughout North America and Europe, including performances with the Aspen Music Festival, the Rome Festival, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, and Opera Cleveland.

McAlister is an active clinician, adjudicator, and member of the Music Teachers National Association. She serves as president-elect of the Ohio Music Teachers Association. In addition, McAlister serves on the Executive Steering Committee for the MTNA Group Piano and Piano Pedagogy Seminar and Editorial Committee for the MTNA e-journal.

 

 

 

 

William Grant Naboré
Artistic Director, Oberlin-Como Piano Academy
Visiting Teacher in Residence
 

A native of Roanoke, Virginia, William Grant Naboré began his formal piano studies at age 8 with Kathleen Kelly Coxe. Two years later, he was accepted at Hollins College as a special student of the noted musicologist Anne McClenny. At 17 he won a scholarship from the Italian government and continued his piano studies with Carlo Zecchi (a pupil of Busoni and Schnabel) at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome. He also studied with the eminent pianist and pedagogue Renata Borgatti. Later he was coached privately by Rudolf Serkin, George Szell, and Alicia de Larrocha. He studied chamber music with Pierre Fournier in Geneva and won the Premier Prix de la Virtuosité and the Prix Paderewski from the Geneva Conservatory.
 
For more than 20 years, in collaboration with the city of Geneva, he performed the complete chamber works of Brahms, Schumann, Dvorák, Beethoven, and Schubert, plus the essential works of the French and Russian repertoire, with ensembles including the Amadeus, Talich, Gabrieli, and Brindisi quartets. He was also active as a member of the Studio de Musique Contemporaine, where he performed European premieres of several important American works. In 1988 he founded the Amadeus Festival, just outside of Geneva.
 
Naboré has received critical recognition on the international concert circuit as cultural ambassador for the United States and has appeared as soloist with the Orchestra di Santa Cecilia, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, and the Munich Chamber Orchestra. His distinguished discography is broad and eclectic.
 
An outstanding teacher, Naboré has shaped some of the finest young artists of this generation. In 1993 he became founding director of the International Piano Foundation "Theo Lieven," created and financed by the German businessman Theo Lieven, who is himself a pianist. The foundation has become one of the most respected musical institutions in the world for the extraordinary successes of its students. This entity now hosts the program Young Masters of the Keyboard at the Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano. Nabore holds the Theo Lieven Chair for Advanced Studies in Piano and Chamber Music Performance at this conservatory.
 
In 2002, Nabore, along with Martha Argerich, created the International Piano Academy Lake Como, where he is president and artistic director. Argerich serves as president of honor.
 
Recently, Nabore's students won first prize at the 2015 Tchaikovsky Piano Competition (Dmitry Masleev) and first prize at the 2015 Honens Competition (Luca Buratto).
Learn more about the Oberlin-Como Academy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Educational Background
BM (Piano Performance), Tung-Hai University (Taiwan, 2005)
MM (Piano Performance), Arizona State University (2008)
DMA (Collaborative Piano), University of Texas at Austin (2012)

 

Allie Su has taught and performed in the U.S., China, and Italy since moving from her native Taiwan in 2006. In the summer of 2015, Su was appointed as a collaborative pianist at the Meadowmount School of Music Summer Festival and the Cooper International Violin Competition. She has served as a vocal coach for the Young Artist Program at the Butler Opera Center, the Franco-American Vocal Academy, and the summer festival Lingua e Canto in Italy. She served as a vocal collaborative pianist at the ISING! festival in Suzhou, China, during the summer of 2014. In addition to her role at the Oberlin Conservatory, Su is a member of the piano faculty at the Oberlin Community Music School.

 

Su completed a doctoral of musical arts degree in collaborative piano from the University of Texas at Austin under the tutelage of renowned teacher Anne Epperson. In addition to her collaborations with Oberlin colleagues, other notable artist collaborations include Zuill Bailey, Charles Castleman, David Small, and Yuan Zheng.

 

 

 

James Howsmon
Professor of Instrumental Accompanying
 
"My job as much as this is possible is to get two people to play together as if they were one musical mind," says Professor James Howsmon of his approach to working with piano students learning to accompany other instrumentalists.

E-mail: 
James.Howsmon@oberlin.edu 

 

Educational Background
BM, University of North Carolina (1976)
MM, Eastman School of Music (1978)
Piano study with George Kiorpes, David Burge
Collaborative study with Samuel Sanders, Charles Reiner
Chamber music study with Luise Vosgerchian, Frank Glazer

 

James Howsmon has collaborated in more than 1,000 recitals in North America, Europe, and Japan. He has performed with principal players of every major American orchestra. In recent seasons, he has played in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington, D.C. (at the Kennedy Center), Philadelphia, Dallas, Montreal, and Minneapolis.

 

Highlights of recent seasons include performances of Stravinsky’s Les Noces with the Cleveland Orchestra, conducted by Pierre Boulez; an ongoing series of the complete Mozart sonatas for piano and violin with violinist Marilyn McDonald; and several performances of Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin with the prominent basso Robert Holl. He is a frequent performer on Oberlin College’s stages, having recently played the Poulenc Aubade with the Oberlin Wind Ensemble and Olivier Messiaen’s Couleurs de la Cité Celeste with the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble.

 

Mr. Howsmon is professor of instrumental accompanying at Oberlin, where he oversees the instrumental collaborative activities of the school’s 100 piano majors. He is also on the faculty of Credo, a summer chamber music program held at Oberlin College. From 1999 to 2006, Mr. Howsmon was on the piano faculty of the Brevard Music Center. He has given guest master classes in accompanying and chamber music at, among others, the Juilliard School, the Cleveland Institute of Music, the Interlochen Arts Academy, Arizona State University, the University of Colorado, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Alabama.

 

He is married to violist Louise Zeitlin. They live in Oberlin.