Acclaimed piano instructor Marvin Blickenstaff will be in residence at the Blair School on Saturday, September 17, for a full day of workshops, lectures and master classes. The sessions are co-sponsored by the Nashville Area Music Teachers Association and the Blair School. All sessions take place in Choral Rehearsal Hall.
Blickenstaff is known among piano teachers throughout the country for his teaching, lecturing, performing and publishing. For 16 summers he was on the faculty of the International Workshops, where he performed and lectured in Canada, Austria, Scotland, Norway, France and Switzerland.
In 1995 and again in 2004, The Registered Piano Teachers of New Zealand sponsored him in concert and workshop tours of that country. The “Marvin Blickenstaff Endowment Fund” was established in his honor by the Music Teachers National Association Foundation, and he was named Teacher of the Year by the Indiana MTA. In 2007 the online journal Piano Pedagogy Forum published tributes to Blickenstaff honoring his contribution to piano teaching in America. Also in 2007, he was named Fellow of the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. He was honored in 2009 with MTNA’s highest honor, the MTNA Achievement Award, and was selected in 2013 by the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy for its Lifetime Achievement Award.
Formerly head of the piano departments at the University of North Carolina/Chapel Hill and Goshen College, Ind., he has taught on the faculties of the Westminster Choir College and The College of New Jersey. Currently he maintains a private studio in the Philadelphia area and teaches at The New School for Music Study in Princeton. Blickenstaff is former Board President of the Frances Clark Center for Keyboard Pedagogy and is on the Executive Planning Committee of the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy.
Schedule for Saturday, Sept. 17
8:30-9 a.m. Registration
9-10:15 a.m. Doing What Comes Naturally: Nature’s Clues to Effective Interpretation
10:30-11:45 a.m. Burgmüller’s 25 Progressive Pieces, Op. 100: Basic Technical Instruction Through Romantic Character Pieces
11:45 a.m.-1 p.m. Lunch break
1-3 p.m. Master class