Purchase tickets
General admission: $13
Students: Free (ticket required)

Mead Witter School of Music Faculty Artist Series
Part of the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging Festival

Jessica Johnson, piano
Kate Corby, choreographer

……

Program 

The program features four world world premieres with three of the four composers in attendance. All works on the program are written in the 21st century. The four new commissions were recently written for Jessica Johnson (designated below with “world premiere”). The three composers will be talking briefly about their works prior to the performance.

……

Jessica Johnson serves on the piano faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as Professor of Piano and Piano Pedagogy, where in 2006, she was the recipient of UW-Madison’s prestigious Emil Steiger Distinguished Teaching Award for excellence in teaching. Johnson frequently commissions and programs contemporary solo and chamber works, regularly performing with Sole Nero, a piano and percussion duo with Anthony Di Sanza, percussion An advocate for the adoption of the Donison-Steinbuhler (DS) Standard, offering alternatively sized piano keyboards, her upcoming recording features newly commissioned works by Serra Hwang, Elena Ruehr, Laura Schwendinger, and Brianna Ware, performed on the DS5.5™ (“7/8”) keyboard.

An active clinician, she has given workshops and presentations at the European Piano Teachers Association International Conference, World Piano Pedagogy Conference, ISME, MTNA, CMS, Performing Arts Medicine Association (PAMA), National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy (NCKP), Portland International Piano Festival, as well as held residencies at major universities and colleges throughout North America, Europe and China. Johnson has articles published in American Music Teacher, Piano Journal of the European Piano Teachers Association, Piano Magazine, and the Piano Pedagogy Forum. She is a three-time winner of American Music Teacher’s Article of the Year Award for “Feeling the Sound: Reflections on Claiming One’s Own Musical Voice” (2014), “The Art of Listening with Depth, Understanding, Flow and Imagery” (2007), and “Awakening Rhythmic Intuition and Flow in the Developing Pianist” (2019). Current research explores cross-modal, multi-sensory engagement in the creative process, musician wellness, and the impact of contemplative practices on making music joyfully.