Speaker Biographies: 2009-2010

THE BARTON AND LEHRER DUO (Back to Meetings) has been performing regularly throughout the United States since 1984. Appearances have included recitals and master classes at national conferences, summer music festivals, universities, and community music schools.  They have recorded three CD's, including the music of Mozart, Rachmaninoff, Laurie Altman, and Dianne Goolkasian Rahbee.

ENA BRONSTEIN BARTON heads the Piano Department of the Westminster Conservatory and is a member of the Westminster Choir College Piano Faculty. Her international career has included solo and duo concerts, lecture-recitals and master classes.

PHYLLIS ALPERT LEHRER is Professor of Piano and directs the graduate piano pedagogy at Westminster Choir College of Rider University. She is recognized internationally as a solo and collaborative pianist, clinician and author.

BONNIE KELLERT, (Back to Meetings) a native of Washington, D. C. is an active performer and teacher in the Washington, D.C. area. Her numerous solo recitals include the National Gallery of Art, Phillips Collection, Textile Museum, Cosmos Club, American University, Howard University, Barker Hall, the Lyceum Alexandria Piano Series and abroad in Sweden in 1994 and Bangkok, Thailand in 2009. Miss Kellert has been the featured soloist with the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra and has appeared on radio and television in the US and abroad.
At age nineteen Miss Kellert became the youngest first prize winner of the prestigious Washington International Competition for Pianists. She also won the Jordan Piano Award and was a semi finalist in the first William Kappell International Piano Competition. While a scholarship student at Peabody Conservatory of Music, she was presented the WBAL-Radio Achievement Award and the Alexander Sklarevski Award for her outstanding performing abilities. Miss Kellert holds Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees in Music Performance from the Peabody Conservatory of Music where she studied with Leon Fleisher.

Bonnie Kellert served on the faculty of the Levine School of Music for 22 years before retiring in 2007. She presently maintains a private studio in her home in Potomac, Maryland, and serves as president of the Washington, DC Music Teachers Association. Miss Kellert is also in demand as a competition adjudicator for local and national competitions and has been published in Keyboard Companion Magazine and on the Internet’s Piano Pedagogy Forum. (Top of page)

SANDRA ROSENBLUM (Back to Meetings) taught piano and music theory at Concord Academy, where she became head of the music department and in 1984 of all the performing arts. She is the author of Performance Practices in Classic Piano Music: Their Principles and Applications. Selected a Choice Outstanding Academic Book in 1989, it was subsequently translated into Korean and recently Italian. Book chapters include an Historical Introduction for Muzio Clementi’s Introduction to the Art of Playing on the Pianoforte (1801) for a facsimile reprint by Da Capo Press, 1974 (v-xxxix); and ‘”A composer known here but to few’: Reception and Performance Styles of Chopin’s Music in America, 1839-1900,” Chapter 13 in The Age of Chopin: Interdisciplinary Inquiries, ed. Halina Goldberg, 2004 (314-353).

Her articles and reviews have appeared in Proceedings of the Second International Chopin Congress, Warsaw, October 10-17, 1999; Fontes Artis Musicae, Journal of the Conductors’Guild, Early Music, Journal of Musicological Research, Performance Practice Review, NOTES, and other journals. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute, NEH, and the American Council of Learned Societies, and of the Wilk Prize for writing on Polish music.

Rosenblum has lectured, given master classes, and adjudicated piano students at universities, conservatories, and piano teachers’s organizations across the U.S. She has also given papers on Chopin at conferences in Durham (UK) and Warsaw. For some time her research has been focused on performance practices in Chopin’s music, most recently including their connection to the instruments he played. Currently she is chair of the Edition Committee for NEPTA and on the Advisory Board of The Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies. (Top of page)

CRISTINA CAPPARELLI (Back to Meetings) A leading figure in the musical circles of her native Brazil, pianist and scholar CRISTINA CAPPARELLI GERLING appears frequently as soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, guest teacher, and lecturer in the United States, Canada, England, France, and Portugal. Her performances have taken her to prominent venues across the world, including Boston’s Jordan Hall, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and Wigmore Hall in London. Cristina has taught at the New England Conservatory Preparatory Division, the Boston University School of the Arts, the Rivers School of Weston, MA, and the Preucil School, and has been a frequent guest performer at the University of Iowa School of Music, where she was a visiting scholar from 1996 to 2000.

In Brazil, Dr. Gerling was instrumental in establishing the highly respected Graduate Music Program at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, in Porto Alegre, where she is Professor of Music and Chair of Keyboard Studies. Committed to playing all styles of piano music, Dr. Gerling has recorded the solo piano music of Bruno Kiefer, a southern Brazilian contemporary composer, and a CD of Latin American piano music including music of Villa-Lobos and Camargo Guarnieri. Her latest CD with Brazilian cellist Tania Lisboa entitled “The Brazilian Cello” has been recently released by Meridian Records, England. A recent research project on Latin American piano music is attracting the attention of pianists and scholars worldwide, and can be seen on the World Wide Web at www.ufrgs.br/gppi. (Top of page)

BRUCE BRUBAKER (Back to Meetings) In live performances from the Hollywood Bowl to New York’s Avery Fisher Hall, from Paris to Hong Kong, and in his continuing series of recordings for Arabesque, BRUCE BRUBAKER is a visionary virtuoso. Named “Young Musician of the Year” by Musical America, Bruce Brubaker has performed Mozart with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Philip Glass on the BBC. He has premiered music by Glass, John Cage, Nico Muhly, and Mark-Anthony Turnage. Profiled on NBC’s Today show, Brubaker’s playing, writing, and collaborations continue to show a shining, and sometimes surprising future for pianists and piano playing. He was recently presented by Carnegie Hall at Zankel Hall in New York, and performed at the opening of Boston’s new Institute for Contemporary Art, and Michigan’s Gilmore Festival. A long time member of the faculty at the Juilliard School, Brubaker now serves as chair of the piano department at New England Conservatory. (Top of page)

JUDITH GORDON (Back to Meetings) gave her New York recital debut at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's 'Introductions' series, and was selected as Boston Globe 1997 'Musician of the Year'. With the Boston Pops she performed Mozart, Saint-Saens and Ravel concertos and with groups from Boston Modern Orchestra Project to the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra she's explored repertory from Bach and Hindemith to Boulez and Rachmaninoff.

Judith works with artists and groups including vocalists Lisa Saffer, Mary Nessinger, Krista River, William Hite and James Maddalena; cellists Andres Diaz and Rhonda Rider; violists Marcus Thompson and Roger Tapping; violinists Rose Mary Harbison and Elizabeth Chang; Imani Winds; Borromeo, Daedalus, Lydian and St. Lawrence string quartets; Lighthouse Chamber Players, Collage New Music, and Santa Fe New Music. Composers with whom she has often collaborated include Martin Brody, Peter Child, John Harbison, Lee Hyla, and Peter Lieberson. In 2008 she premiered and recorded Donald Wheelock's Piano Variations.

Ms. Gordon performs and teaches at festivals including Charlottesville (VA), Rockport (MA), Token Creek (WI) and Music from Salem (NY) where she is an artistic co-director. She was given a 2009 Outstanding Alumni award by New England Conservatory where her principal teacher was Patricia Zander.
In 2006 she joined the faculty at Smith College in Northampton, MA.(Top of page)