Faculty

The Keyboard Wellness Seminar provides extensive piano instruction to teachers and students of all levels. The faculty members of the KW Seminar-chosen and mentored by founder Sheila Paige-are highly accomplished pianists who recognize the need for a comprehensive approach to musical instruction. Ms. Paige and the KWS promote teaching concepts that address the mind, the body and the spirit. By combining a myriad of disciplines, the faculty of the Keyboard Wellness Seminar are trained to better help teachers recognize the many ways to best suit any student's needs and learning style.


Sheila Paige, founder

sheilapaige@KeyboardWellnessSeminar.com
Philadelphia, PA area
Cherry Hill, NJ

 

Jane Abbott-Kirk

Jane_Abbott-Kirk@baylor.edu
Waco, TX

Jane Abbott-Kirk, professor of piano at Baylor University, is in demand as soloist, collaborator, adjudicator, and clinician. In 1989 she received the Outstanding Tenured Teacher Award from Baylor University. In 2004 she was named the Collegiate Teacher of the Year by the Texas Music Teachers Association. Her former students hold prestigious positions at universities, conservatories, and private teaching venues in this country and abroad. Abbott-Kirk is well known to music teachers’ associations in the South and Midwest through her presentations, workshops, and adjudications, including MTNA state competitions in Texas, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Mississippi, and Wyoming’s seven state Smoky Range Piano competition. Her special expertise is in helping pianists build healthy technique that serves both virtuosity and interpretive sophistication. This teaching approach also helps pianists prevent and recover from performance injuries. A student of Sidney Foster and Menahem Pressler, Professor Kirk received a B.M., M.M., and Performer’s Certificate from Indiana University. More recently, she has worked with Sheila Paige, director of the Keyboard Wellness Seminar. She also serves on the faculty of the Keyboard Wellness Seminar at the University of North Texas. Her performances include the premier of the Bernard Heiden Triple Concerto, concerto performances with the San Antonio and Houston Symphony orchestras, and numerous university orchestras. Jane Abbott-Kirk is a recording artist for the Musical Heritage Society and Raven Records.

Brian J. Allison

ballison@collin.edu
Dallas, TX area

Brian Allison received his undergraduate training at California State University, Sacramento. While a student there he won the Modesto (CA) Symphony Orchestra Young Artists competition, performing the Liszt first piano concerto with the symphony. He completed a Masters of Music in piano performance with highest distinction at Indiana University, studying with Jorge Bolet and Enrica Cavallo-Gulli. His Doctor of Musical Arts in piano performance with harpsichord minor was earned at the University of North Texas. Head of the piano department at Collin College in Plano, Dr. Allison performs regularly as keyboardist with the Dallas Winds and appears with the ensemble on five compact discs released on the Reference Recordings label. He is also a faculty member of Sheila Paige’s Keyboard Wellness Seminar, a frequent adjudicator in the DFW area and maintains a private studio in his home.

Harvey Bellin

hb0216@aol.com
Philadelphia, PA area

Harvey J. Bellin studied piano with David Sokoloff in Philadelphia where he won the Children’s Concert Auditions at the age of 12. He then performed the first movement of Saint-Saens’ G Minor Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Dr. Bellin ended his formal piano studies and entered medical school. He continued to perform, however, playing in dance bands and at clubs and cocktail parties. He took up formal studies again with George Sementovsky and later with Yoheved Kaplinsky and Sheila Paige. He has played in masterclasses at the Dorothy Taubman Institute in Amherst, MA, and then Williamstown, MA, as well as the Piano Wellness Seminar in North Carolina. Dr. Bellin played for the University of Pennsylvania Male Glee Club and traveled with them internationally. He has also accompanied for the Orpheus Club in Philadelphia. Dr. Bellin served as Chairman of the Pathology Department at an academic affiliated community hospital in Philadelphia for many years. He now works in private laboratories as medical director.

Robert Bonham

RJBonham@gmail.com
Knoxville, TN area

Robert Bonham, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus from Maryville College in eastern Tennessee. A recipient of the Maryville College Outstanding Teacher Award, he taught piano and courses that ranged from world music and art history to experiential courses focused on enhancing creativity and wellness.

He first studied music at the international Woodstock School in the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains of India and earned degrees in music from Phillips University and Kansas University, studying with Jon Nelson and Angelica Morales von Sauer. He has studied with Sheila Paige of the Taubman Piano Institute since 1990. His Ph.D. in Comparative Arts is from Ohio University.

Currently he is performing with Trillium, a piano and string ensemble, and the Soiree Winds, a woodwind quintet. Trillium recently completed a weeklong residency at Salisbury University in Maryland, where, in addition to a concert, they offered a series of presentations and workshops on a variety of wellness issues.

In recent years he has led trips to destinations like India, Nepal, Tibet and Bali. Plans for 2016 include combining wellness workshops with sailing on a catamaran in the Aegean Sea. For more information, visit www.robertbonham.info.

Angelin Chang

angelinchang@gmail.com
www.angelinchang.com
Cleveland, OH

Internationally acclaimed pianist Angelin Chang is the first American female pianist awarded the GRAMMY® for Best Instrumental Soloist with Orchestra. She is recognized for her sense of poetry and technical brilliance. Concertizing in Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South America, Miss Chang’s concert tours have led her to such venues as the Kennedy Center (Washington, D.C.), Kimmel Center (Philadelphia), Lincoln Center (New York), Severance Hall (Cleveland), St. Martin-in-the-Fields (London), Zelazowa Wola (Warsaw), Shanghai Grand Theatre (China), Sala Luis Ángel Arango (Bogotá), Schnittke Philharmonic Hall (Russia) and the South African Broadcasting Corporation. She is the first American awarded First Prizes in both piano and chamber music during the same year from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, France. As the first Artist-in-Residence at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Angelin Chang participated in the development and launching of the Arts for Everyone initiative. She has performed at the U.S. Department of State, for the United Nations Women’s Organization in Nepal and for World AIDS Day in New York for the United Nations before the Secretary-General. An active chamber musician, she performs regularly with the legendary violist Joseph de Pasquale, The de Pasquale String Quartet, and with members of the Philadelphia Orchestra and Cleveland Orchestra.

Angelin Chang earned the Doctor of Musical Arts from Peabody Institute – Johns Hopkins University, Premier Prix - Piano and Premier Prix - Musique de Chambre from the Paris Conservatoire, Master of Music and Distinguished Performer Certificate from Indiana University, Bachelor of Arts (French) and Bachelor of Music from Ball State University, and highest honors upon graduation from the Interlochen Arts Academy. Her piano teachers have included Michel Béroff, Marie-Françoise Bucquet, Yoheved Kaplinsky, Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen, Robert McDonald, Menahem Pressler, Pierre Réach, Pia Sebastiani, György Sebök, Louis-Claude Thirion and Dorothy Taubman. She also holds a Juris Doctor from the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law.

Dr. Angelin Chang is Professor of Piano and Coordinator of Keyboard Studies at Cleveland State University, where she is also Professor of Law at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. She serves on the faculty of the Great Lakes Sports and Entertainment Law Academy, a joint program of Case Western University School of Law and Cleveland-Marshall College of Law at Cleveland State University. Previously, Dr. Chang taught on the piano faculty at Rutgers - The State University of New Jersey.

Through her work with the Taubman Approach and Keyboard Wellness Seminars at the University of North Texas and Temple University in Philadelphia, Dr. Chang helps pianists develop virtuosity while liberating them from fatigue, pain and injury.

Angelin Chang is Vice President, Board of Governors of The Recording Academy Chicago Chapter (National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences) and serves as Chair of the Education Committee and the Classical Task Force. She is Past President of the Ohio Music Teachers Association Northeast District and has served on the Board of Trustees for the Great Lakes Theater. Dr. Chang is the Co-Chair of the Research Committee on Asian and Pacific Studies of the International Political Science Association (IPSA/RC18). She also serves as a Cultural Agent of the United States Department of Arts and Culture.

Recordings include solo piano album, Angelin (Sabintu Records), Soaring Spirit (Albany Records) with Angelin Chang on piano and Joseph de Pasquale on viola, and Cleveland Chamber Symphony (TNC) with Angelin Chang as piano soloist and John McLaughlin Williams as conductor in Olivier Messiaen’s Oiseaux Exotiques and Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1. Angelin Chang is Yamaha Corporation of America’s first Academic-Performing Artist. Her use of the Disklavier® hybrid piano in presentation and performance is available upon request.

Yee-ha Chiu

yeehachiu@aol.com
Pittsburgh, PA area

A Steinway Artist, Yeeha Chiu, Hong Kong-born pianist, studied with Ilona Kabos, Bela Siki, Beveridge Webster, Nadia Reisenberg and Sheila Paige. A graduate of the Royal College of Music in London and the Juilliard School of Music, she has taught at Juilliard and Duquesne University.

Miss Chiu performed with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the historic inauguration of the first Concert Hall in Hong Kong. Subsequently she was concerto soloist with the Taipei Municipal Symphony Orchestra, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, and also the Vienna Symphony under Christoph Eschenbach. She has appeared in solo and chamber music recitals in Asia, Australia, Europe and the United States, including a series of concerts in Taiwan sponsored by the United States Information Service. In reviewing her Asian tour, The Japan Times noted that “Her sincere and genuine musicianship made this a truly memorable evening.”

A versatile chamber musician, she has collaborated with members from the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Alexander String Quartet based in San Francisco, the Renaissance City Winds, at the Organ Historical Convention, Art Songs with Daphne Alderson, Lilly Abreu, and Eva Ostrakovna. She has also performed the entire cycle of trios for Piano, Violin and Cello by Beethoven and Brahms.

Yeeha Chiu is in demand as teacher and coach. She is also on the faculty at the annual Keyboard Wellness Seminar in Texas directed by Sheila Paige.

Vicki Conway

Vicki_Conway@uttyler.edu
Tyler , TX area

Vicki Conway has been on the faculty of the University of Texas at Tyler since 1984. She graduated summa cum laude from Stephen F. Austin State University with a double major in piano and organ performance, receiving the Lenvill Martin Outstanding Music Graduate Award. She earned a Master of Music degree in piano performance from Baylor University and completed additional graduate study with Jane Magrath at The University of Oklahoma. Ms. Conway has served as organist in many churches, and is currently organist at Greggton United Methodist Church and Elmira Chapel Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Longview. She is an active performer, presenting duo piano recitals with Mary Tidwell and collaborative performances with musicians throughout the East Texas region. She studies piano with Sheila Paige and became a faculty member of the Keyboard Wellness Seminar in 2009.

Ms. Conway initiated a Developmental Fitness program in 1998, and has conducted numerous workshops and clinics showing the relationships between gross motor skills, cognitive processing, memory, and performing skills. She has completed training through Foster Educational Group and the Educational Kinesiology Foundation (Brain Gym®), including a recent Vision Circles course taught by Carla Hanniford, author of Smart Moves: Why Learning is Not All in Your Head. Presentations have included numerous public and private schools and music teachers’ associations, Coppell Conservatory, Cleveland Chapter/Ohio Music Teachers Association, the 2000 Texas Music Educators Association Convention, the 2005, 2007, and 2009 Texas Music Teachers Association Conventions, and annual Keyboard Wellness Seminars since 2002.


Sarah Lepp

Sarah Lepp.jpg

sarahclepp@gmail.com
Austin, TX area

Sarah Lepp’s performances are infused with an emotional depth and honesty that engages diverse audiences. Sarah loves performing and finds meaning in being able to share her many life experiences with others through music.

She has studied under Gregory Allen, Betty Mallard, and Jose Mendez and holds both a Master of Music and Bachelor of Music in piano performance from the University of Texas at Austin. Currently she is a faculty-in-training for the Keyboard Wellness Seminar under the direction of Sheila Paige.

Sarah’s passion for helping those in crisis led her to provide volunteer crisis counseling with the Travis County Sheriff’s Office and Austin Police Department’s Victim Services. In addition to her volunteer work, Sarah served in the Army National Guard for eight years.

Sarah lives in Knoxville, Tennessee where she teaches piano.


Stephen Montoya

sgmontoya1@mac.com
Albuquerque, NM  

Stephen Montoya is a native New Mexican who obtained his Master’s Degree in Piano Performance from the University of New Mexico. He has studied piano with George Robert and Rita Angel, and organ with Dr. Alexander Schreiner and Dr. Linda Raney. Mr. Montoya has concertized throughout the southwest and on the east coast both as a recitalist and a collaborative artist and has lectured at the University of New Mexico and to various chapters of the MTNA. Mr. Montoya studies piano with Sheila Paige, founder and executive director of The Piano Wellness Seminar, where he is also a member of the faculty, and maintains a busy schedule teaching and performing.

Lynn Rice-See

lynnsee@twc.com
web.mac.com/lynnricesee
New York  

Since her 1982 Carnegie Recital Hall debut, Lynn Rice-See has appeared as recitalist, concerto soloist, and chamber musician in the United States, Europe, and Asia. She has appeared with the Janacek Philharmonic Orchestra (Czech Republic), Gulf Coast Symphony, Huntsville Symphony, Johnson City Symphony, and the Kingsport Symphony. She was on the piano faculty of East Tennessee State University and Middle Tennessee State University before moving to New York City. She is presently an adjunct faculty member of the Montclair State University John Cali School of Music and a member of the faculty at Bloomingdales School of Music. She has been a member of the faculty of the Keyboard Wellness Seminar since its inception in 2000.

American Record Guide said of her cd, Evocation, “[Berg sonata] an expressive and moving performance ... [Busoni Sonatina No. 2] seizes each technical challenge and makes it work as a cohesive whole ... [Scriabin Sonata No. 3] conveyed in playing that is stirring, sensuous, and wistful at the same time.” She has recently released her recording of the Schubert Sonata in B-flat major, D. 960. Her publications include articles in American Music Teacher, Clavier, and Piano Guild Notes. Her book, The Piano Teaching of Walter Hautzig, was reviewed in Clavier Companion as, “Reading this fascinating and inspiring book is like attending days of masterclasses…” She holds her BMus degree from Peabody Conservatory, MM from the Juilliard School, and the DMA from the University of Southern California.

Mary Tidwell

rachykeys@gmail.com
Tyler, TX area

Mary Tidwell has been Instructor of music theory, ear-training, and music appreciation at Trinity Valley Community College since the fall of 2011. She served as Professor and Chair of the Music Department and Fine Arts Division at Lon Morris College in Jacksonville, Texas, from 1993-2011. Prior to that time, she taught at Indiana-Purdue University in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.

Ms. Tidwell has served as organist at First United Methodist Church, Henderson, since August of 2015.

She obtained both the Bachelor of Music Degree in Piano Performance (magna cum laude) and Master of Music Degree in Piano Performance and Literature from Baylor University. Her teachers have included Ruth Burr, Michael Ard, Roger Keyes, Jane Abbott-Kirk, and Sheila Paige.

Bradley Hunter Welch: Organ

bradleyhunterwelch@gmail.com
www.concertartists.com/BW.html
Dallas, TX area

Hailed as “a world-class virtuoso” and “an expert at defining darks, lights, shadows and colors,” Bradley Hunter Welch is increasingly in demand as a recitalist, concerto soloist, and collaborative artist. A native of Knoxville, TN, Bradley holds the Doctor of Musical Arts, Master of Musical Arts, Master of Music degrees, and the Artist Diploma from Yale University where he studied with Thomas Murray and Martin Jean. He also holds the Bachelor of Music degree magna cum laude from Baylor University where he studied with Joyce Jones. Dr. Welch has also continued his study of organ and piano technique with Sheila Paige.

Dr. Welch is the 2003 First Place winner of the Dallas International Organ Competition and was also awarded the Audience Prize for the second time, having previously won it in 2000. In 2005, he was a featured artist at three regional conventions of The American Guild of Organists, and he made his European debut in France performing in the Chartres Festival. He has appeared as soloist with the Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra, the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. With the DSO, he gave the world premier of Stephen Paulus’ Grand Concerto for Organ and Orchestra, the piece written for Bradley as the winner of the Dallas International Organ Competition. Additionally, he has taught at Southern Methodist University and Baylor University. He was Director of Music & Arts at Highland Park United Methodist Church in Dallas, TX, from 2009-2014 and currently devotes his full-time attention to a thriving solo concert career. Between his concert and recording engagements, Dr. Welch serves as Artist-in-Residence at Christ Church (Anglican) in Plano, TX-- one of the largest Anglican churches in the United States. In addition to these duties, he performs approximately 20 concerts annually under the exclusive artistic management of Phillip Truckenbrod Concert Artists, Hartford, CT.

His premier recording is the first solo organ recording of the Cliburn Organ at Broadway Baptist Church, and his recording on the magnificent Fisk organ at the Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas is currently in production. Bradley is married to Kara Kirkendoll Welch, a flutist in the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Adjunct Professor of Flute at Southern Methodist University. They have a son--Ethan Hunter Welch--and a newborn daughter--Avery Kristine Welch.