TMTA Conference

Featured Guest Artist & Clinician

Spencer Myer, Featured Artist

Spencer Myer’s recital appearances have been presented in New York City’s Weill Recital Hall, 92nd Street Y and Steinway Hall, Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center and London’s Wigmore Hall, while many of his performances have been broadcast on WQXR (New York City), WHYY (Philadelphia), WCLV (Cleveland) and WFMT (Chicago). An in-demand chamber musician, he has appeared numerous summers at the Lev Aronson Legacy Festival in Dallas with cellists Lynn Harrell, Ralph Kirshbaum, Amit Peled and Brian Thornton, and has enjoyed a recurring partnership for over a decade with the Miami String Quartet at the Kent/Blossom Music Festival. Other artistic partners have included clarinetist David Shifrin, sopranos Nicole Cabell, Martha Guth and Erin Wall, the Jupiter and Pacifica String Quartets and the Dorian Wind Quintet.

Spencer Myer’s career was launched with three important prizes: First Prize in the 2004 UNISA International Piano Competition in South Africa, the 2006 Christel DeHaan Classical Fellowship from the American Pianists Association and the Gold Medal from the 2008 New Orleans International Piano Competition. He is also a laureate of the 2007 William Kapell, 2005 Cleveland and 2005 Busoni International Piano Competitions. He enjoys an esteemed reputation as a vocal collaborator since winning the 2000 Marilyn Horne Foundation Competition. Mr. Myer was a member of Astral Artists’ performance roster from 2003-2010. A renowned pedagogue, Spencer Myer is currently Associate Professor of Piano at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Previously, he has served as a guest faculty at the Oberlin and Baldwin-Wallace Conservatories of Music, and was a member of the Piano Faculty of Boston’s Longy School of Music of Bard College from 2016 to 2022. He currently serves on the Board of New York’s Musicians Foundation and Brooklyn Art Song Society.

Spencer Myer’s debut CD for harmonia mundi usa - solo music of Busoni, Copland, Debussy and Kohs - was released in the fall of 2007 to critical acclaim by Fanfare and Gramophone magazines. Mr. Myer has released five recordings on the Steinway & Sons label since 2017: Piano Rags of William Bolcom, three discs with cellist Brian Thornton encompassing cello/piano repertoire of Brahms, Debussy and Schumann, and most recently Chopin’s Four Impromptus.

Spencer Myer is a Steinway Artist.

www.spencermyer.com

Vanessa Cornett, Featured Clinician

A member of the Committee on Wellness for the Pianist for the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy, she is also involved in diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives at the university, state, and national levels. She received outstanding teaching awards from the Music Academy of North Carolina and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She was honored with the UNCG Distinguished Alumni Award in 2018 and named the Jane Frazee Distinguished Scholar-Artist at the University of St. Thomas in 2021. Dr. Cornett earned the DMA degree in piano performance and literature from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She earned the MM in piano pedagogy and BM in piano performance from West Virginia University, and she holds additional post-graduate certifications in sport psychology and occupational ergonomics. She is a certified meditation instructor with a special interest in performance anxiety management for musicians. Her current research focuses on contemplative practices, sport psychology, peak performance, and the mental health of musicians.