Pianist, teacher, and chamber musician Liz Seidel, D.A., maintained The Seidel Studio, a highly successful private piano studio in Muncie, Ind., for 25 years. She was founder of Pianoforte, Inc. (now Carmel Klavier, Inc.), which provided educational opportunities for young musicians and hosted the annual Young Artists’ Achievement Festival. Carmel Klavier, Inc. now hosts the Carmel Klavier International Piano Competition for Young Artists (Carmel, Ind.), of which Seidel is a co-founder.
Seidel holds a Bachelor of Music from Ithaca College and Master of Music from Temple University, both in piano performance, and Doctor of Arts in piano performance, music history, and musicology from Ball State University. She has held adjunct faculty positions at Miami University (Ohio), University of Wisconsin (Superior), University of Minnesota (Duluth) and Ball State University (Ind.). She was a member of the summer piano faculty at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp (Mich.) for 13 years, has served on the board of the Indiana Music Teachers Association, and was the recipient of a Teacher Enrichment Grant awarded by the Music Teachers National Association.
Invitations for solo and chamber music concerts throughout the United States and Canada include the Pacific Rim Summer Chamber Music Festival (British Columbia) and the St. Petersburg College Piano Concert Series (Fla.). Currently, she is Collaborative Pianist for the annual Jascha Heifetz Symposium at Connecticut College. As an adjudicator, Seidel enjoys regional and state competitions, including MTNA and Musicfest Northwest, an annual festival for young artists in Spokane (Wash.).
Seidel’s passion is teaching. Her students have placed as international semi-finalists and performance majors to prominent universities and summer festivals. Seidel’s lecture topics include “The Schumann and Tchaikovsky Albums for the Young as Piano Method,” “Chamber Music in the Piano Studio, and “Teaching Technique: It’s All About the Wrist!” Her most recent topic, “The Impact of the Arts on a Disabled Brain” (presented with her daughter, Christine), was introduced at the 2014 National Conference for Disorders of the Corpus Callosum in Boston.
Seidel believes each student is unique – each student has a gift; it is her job to discover the pathway through which each gift of expression and creativity will flourish.
Each student is unique – each student has a gift; it is my job to discover the pathway through which their gift of expression and creativity will flourish.