Marvin Blickenstaff, pianist and pedagogue

Marvin Blickenstaff is known among piano teachers throughout the country for his teaching, lecturing, performing, and publishing. He has presented workshops for piano teachers throughout the USA and abroad: for over ten years he served on the faculty of International Workshops where he performed and lectured in Norway, Canada, Austria, Scotland, France, and Switzerland. The Marvin Blickenstaff Endowment Fund was established in his honor by the Music Teachers National Association Foundation. He was awarded in 2009 with MTNA’s highest honor, the MTNA Achievement Award, and was named Fellow of the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto in 2007. Music Pathways, a 36-book instructional series was co-authored by Blickenstaff, Lynn Freeman Olson and Louise Bianchi. Notable editions by Blickenstaff include Grieg: Short Pieces, Bach: Dances, Beethoven: Short Pieces, all published by Carl Fischer. He serves as a piano editor for the Frederick Harris Music Company (Toronto) and has published Celebration Series: A Handbook for Teachers with co-authors Cathy Albergo and Reid Alexander. Blickenstaff has been on the editorial board of The American Music Teacher and is an associate editor of the periodical Keyboard Companion.
 
Blickenstaff's teaching career is associated with the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill where he taught for nine years and served as Chairman of Instruction in Piano, with Goshen College (IN) where he taught for over twenty years, and from 2000-2013 he was President of the Frances Clark Center for Keyboard Pedagogy. He now resides in the greater Philadelphia area and is teaching at The College of New Jersey (Ewing), the Westminster Choir College and Conservatory of Rider University and The New School for Music Study (Princeton). Blickenstaff holds degrees from The Oberlin Conservatory of Music and Indiana University where he received both performing and academic honors. His teachers have included Fern Nolte Davidson, Emil Danenberg, and Bela Böszormenyi-Nagy, and he has coached with Leon Fleisher and György Sebök.

Njål Sparbo, 2009 Grieg Prize recipient

​Njål Sparbo is one of Norway’s most active and versatile singers, with an exceptionally broad repertoire of song, oratorio and opera. In 1997-99 and 2005-08 he received the Norwegian Government Grant for Artists for working with the art song tradition. He has been awarded the Kirsten Flagstad Prize, the Ingrid Bjoner Prize, and in 2009 he received the Grieg Prize for his contribution to renew the musical interpretation tradition of Grieg’s songs by bringing forth the dramatic essence. In 2009-2014 he worked as a research fellow at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts in The Norwegian Artistic Research Fellowship Programme with the project “Singing on the stage - with a psychophysical approach.” He has continued as a researcher of psychophysical stage presence, combining contemporary aesthetics with the tradition of Norwegian Psychomotor Therapy, and he has engagements as associate professor at the Academy of Opera and at the Academy of Ballet at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. He is currently a member of the research group “The Reflective Musician - Interpretation as Co-Creative Process” at the National Academy of Music in Oslo. Sparbo is an advocate of contemporary music performance and has sung numerous world premiere performances. He performs regularly at festivals and on television and radio, and he has participated in
30 CD recordings. His solo engagements include all the major Norwegian choirs and orchestras and The Norwegian National Opera. He is heard performing at venues all over Europe and beyond, including Russia, USA and Japan. 

Dr. Beverly Lapp, Goshen College

​Beverly Lapp, Professor of Music, chairs the music department and serves as Core Curriculum Director at Goshen College. She leads a variety of teams in her work for Core and Music with a focus on recruitment, curricular planning, and assessment. She recently initiated and helped achieve successful academic approval for a new Music for Social Change major concentration and minor and also helped design a new Musical Theater minor in collaboration with the Goshen College theater department. Beverly’s passion for music is rooted in childhood experiences with Mennonite hymn-singing and in regular ongoing experiences with the healing and transformative power of singing in harmony with others. She enjoys contributing in congregational settings as a hymn leader and pianist and serving as faculty sponsor of the unique student-led Goshen College Hymn Club. Beverly serves on the Board of Trustees for the Frances Clark Center for Keyboard Pedagogy.  She will live in Nanchong, China (Sichuan Province) with her family in fall semester 2017 to oversee Goshen College’s Study-Service-Term.

Dr. Gloria Cook, Rollins College

Gloria Cook holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music. She is a winner of many competitions, including the Cleveland Institute Concerto Competition, the Springfield Symphony Concerto Competition, and the Ohio Federation of Music Clubs State Competition. As a soloist, she has performed with the Springfield Symphony, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra, the Charleston Symphony and recently with the Bach Festival Orchestra of Winter Park. She was also a chamber music player at the Tanglewood Music Festival and the Charleston Piccolo Spoleto Festival. Gloria Cook and her sister, Cynthia Lawing of Davidson College, are well-known duo-piano artists. They have won many duo-piano competitions in the orient and have given numerous performances in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau in front of royalties and dignitaries. As Associated Colleges of the South duo-piano artists, they have performed at many colleges and conferences in Ohio, Illinois, Alabama, Texas, and North Carolina. Dr. Cook is a Professor of Piano at Rollins College. She was recently awarded the prestigious Cornell Distinguished Faculty Award at Rollins. Dr. Cook is frequently asked to judge various state and regional competitions in Florida.