KEYBOARD FACULTY
FACULTY BY AREA
Bands
Brass
Choirs
Composition and Technology
Conducting
Jazz Studies
Keyboard
Music Education
Musicology
Orchestras
Percussion
Strings
Theory
Voice, and Opera
Woodwinds
Mary Bahnfleth, organ
Vincent Benitez, organ, music theory
Enrico Elisi, piano
Sue Haug, piano
Timothy Shafer, piano
Steven Smith, piano
Enrico Elisi joined the Penn State faculty in 2008. He regularly performs and gives master classes in Europe, America, and Asia. He has appeared as a soloist with several orchestras in the US, Italy, and Portugal. He was featured as a recitalist in several radio broadcasts. In 2008 a German radio station hosted a two-and-a-half-hour program about Mr. Elisi. With his versatility he has garnered top awards at such diverse venues as the Venice Competition - which brought him a performance at the famous La Fenice theatre, in Italy - and the Oporto International Competition - which led to a broadcast for Portuguese national television. An active chamber musician, Mr. Elisi has collaborated with many renowned artists and has also performed at the Taos and Ravinia Festivals. Mr. Elisi is equally at home with the standard repertoire as well as new music. He enjoys working with living composers and has premiered several works (some of which were dedicated to him) at debut recitals in Toulouse, France; Carnegie Recital Hall; as well as other venues in North and South America.
He is the founder and artistic director of the Green Valley Chamber Music Festival, and he has previously directed the Piano Institute of the Las Vegas Music Festival. He is also active nationally and internationally as an adjudicator. Mr. Elisi worked extensively with Leon Fleisher at the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University, where he served as his mentor's assistant during his master's and doctoral degrees. Mr. Elisi also holds two Italian degrees from the Conservatory of Florence and the International Piano Academy of Imola where he studied with Lazar Berman.
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Sue Haug became director of the School of Music in July 2005. Prior to her arrival at Penn State, she served as head of the Department of Music at Iowa State University, a position she had held since 1991. She taught piano and piano pedagogy as a member of the ISU music faculty since 1975.
Haug holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a doctor of musical arts degree from the University of Iowa. She has performed regularly as soloist and accompanist. She and her colleagues at ISU developed and toured with original music-dramas on the lives and music of Clara Schumann, Johannes Brahms, and Nadia Boulanger. Her most recent research has focused on sight-reading at the piano and cognitive psychology as it applies to the learning of music. Haug's articles have been published in the American Music Teacher, Clavier, and Keyboard Companion, and she has been invited to give presentations at national meetings of the College Music Society, Music Teachers National Association, the National Conference on Piano Pedagogy, and Sigma Alpha Iota.
In addition to her work at ISU, she has taught piano in her home studio and has been active as an adjudicator and clinician. She is past president of the Iowa Music Teachers Association and is a member of the National Association of Schools of Music Commission on Accreditation.
Timothy Shafer received the Pennsylvania Music Teachers Association Teacher of the Year Award for 1997. He teaches studio piano and coordinates the class piano and piano pedagogy programs at both undergraduate and graduate levels.
Shafer earned the bachelor of music degree in piano performance from the Oberlin Conservatory, where he won several performing awards, including the Rudolf Serkin Outstanding Pianist Award. He received master's and doctoral degrees in piano performance from Indiana University, where he was the winner of the prestigious annual Concerto Competition, performing the Tchaikowsky Concerto in B-flat minor.
Shafer appeared in Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall in 1995 as member of Duo Concertant and returned in 1997 for his solo debut. In addition to maintaining an active solo recital and chamber music schedule in the United States, he has concertized, taught and adjudicated in South America and Asia. He is an active master-class clinician and competition adjudicator throughout the country for professional music organizations and colleges, and is a frequent soloist with many regional orchestras. Shafer is the co-author of Class Piano for Adult Beginners, published by Prentice-Hall. His articles on piano teaching have appeared in the Piano Pedagogy Forum and in the American Music Teacher. He has recently completed a six year span of service on the board of the National Conference of Keyboard Pedagogy, serving as co-chair for the Student Committee.
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Steven Smith teaches studio piano and piano literature. A native Texan, he received his undergraduate degree from Baylor University and his master's and doctoral degrees from the Eastman School of Music. He also holds an artist's diploma from the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria. His teachers have included Cecile Genhart and Kurt Neumueller.
Smith has concertized throughout the United States, Europe, Africa, Pacific Rim countries including Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand. He has recorded solo recitals for the French and Spanish National Radios, the Hessian Radio and Germany's ARD network, Radio 4 Hong Kong, and PBS Television. He has played concerti with the Dallas and Pittsburgh symphonies as well as numerous regional orchestras. He has also presented lecture recitals and master classes at Hong Kong's Academy of Performing Arts, Glasgow's Royal Scottish Academy, and numerous universities and teacher associations. His recordings appear on the Cambria and Innova labels (CD) and Crystal Records (LP).
Smith's Penn State students have won competitive awards including the Fulbright grant for study overseas, and prizes of the PMTA/MTNA and of the American Matthay Association, including both the top national prizes in the Clara Wells Scholarship Competition.
Click here for more on Steven Smith's recordings
Click here for more on Steven Smith.