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Clara Christian, pianist
Performer
Dr. Clara Christian is Associate Professor of Music at College of the Ozarks in Point Lookout, MO. She has a D.M.A. in Piano Performance and Pedagogy from Northwestern University's Bienen School of Music and a Masters of Music degree from the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University.
She has performed throughout the U.S, in France, and in St. Petersburg, Russia, and is active as both a soloist and as a collaborative artist; she is pianist for the clarinet-saxophone-piano trio FuseTrio (www.fusetrio.com) which commissions cross-over works blending jazz and classical traditions.
Dr. Christian is committed to performing new music and has performed works by numerous living composers in addition to traditional repertoire. Her graduate work included research and performances of Sergei Prokofiev and the American composers Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, and Roy Harris. She was a semi-finalist in the 2017 International Franz Liszt competition, a 2022 finalist for the American Prize in Piano Performance-professional division, and a semi- finalist in the Music International Grand Prix's 2024 competition.
Educator
Dr. Christian has fifteen years of experience in collegiate teaching, and has worked with pre-collegiate piano students for over 20 years. She has given pedagogy presentations at the local, state, and national level on a variety of subjects, including how to teach group lessons, how to introduce early classical repertoire, and teaching students with ADHD.
Dr. Christian teaches applied piano, piano pedagogy, collaborative piano, piano literature, music history, and class piano at College of the Ozarks; she is now in her eleventh year of teaching there. She works with piano majors, piano minors, and non-music majors, and her students have won awards both at the state and national level.
Dr. Christian is the adviser for the MTNA Collegiate Chapter at the College of the Ozarks which was selected to present at the 2022 and 2023 MTNA national conferences. The college hosts a Fall Piano Festival on campus every October for area music teachers and their students, as well as an annual Summer Piano Camp. A frequent adjudicator for pre-college masterclasses and competitions, she is passionate about enabling students of all ages to be able to play with a comfortable, versatile approach to the keyboard.
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