9:30-10:15 Pre-Meeting Discussion
Presenters: Jennifer Cohen and Jia-Yee Tang
Program: Achievement in Music Exams (AIM): Orientation and Q&A
NSMTA AIM Coordinators, Jennifer Cohen and Jia-Yee Tang will lead a discussion with an overview of AIM for the 2024-25 year.
10:15-11:00 Business Meeting
Meeting will be led by NSMTA President, Heidi Mayer
11:00-12:00 Program
Presenters: Claire Aebersold and Ralph Neiweem
Program: Four Hand Repertoire and Techniques for Students
We will review and discuss piano duet repertoire which we have found most successful with our piano duo students. We will have handouts of student repertoire lists, and play a short program highlighting some of this music, leaving time for questions and answers.
BIOGRAPHY
Claire Aebersold and Ralph Neiweem
Piano Duo
Described as “consummate practitioners of pianism” (The Washington Post) Claire Aebersold and Ralph Neiweem enjoy an international career as performers of music for both piano duet and two keyboards. Currently in their 40th season before the public, the duo has been heard on RAI-TV Italy, PBS television, and on WFMT Radio in Chicago, where they performed an unprecedented series thirty live broadcast concerts covering virtually the complete four-hand repertoire of the 19th and 20th centuries. Aebersold and Neiweem have appeared with orchestras internationally, including the Chicago Philharmonic and the Vienna Tonkünstler. They have been heard in recital in many cities throughout the USA and Europe, including Chicago, New York, Detroit, Washington, D.C., Santa Fe, Vienna, Rome, Florence and a residency in Odessa, Ukraine, and at the Gina Bachauer Festival in Salt Lake City, Utah. Performances in New York include a 25th anniversary celebration concert at Merkin Hall.
The duo has commissioned significant new works for the piano duo, including Joseph Turrin’s “Symmetries” for Two Pianos; “Great Movements” Sonata for piano, four hands by Patrick Byers; and “Cries and Whispers” by Robert Chumbley. Aebersold and Neiweem’s many CDs on the Summit label include a complete traversal of Schubert’s four-hand music, praised by Gramophone Magazine as “utterly charming...warmly recommended.”
In 2020 Aebersold and Neiweem were awarded the 1st Josef and Rosina Lhevinne Legacy prize for their achievements both in Piano Duo performance and teaching. They were also the first recipients of the Colburn award for excellence in teaching at the Music Institute of Chicago.
Claire Aebersold is a native of Oak Ridge, Tennessee and is a graduate of the New England Conservatory. Ralph Neiweem hails from Evanston, Illinois and is a graduate of the Juilliard School. Their joint teachers include Theodore Lettvin, Irwin Freundlich, Orazio Frugoni, and John Browning. Both completed graduate studies at Northwestern University. They are currently Artists-in-Residence at the Music Institute of Chicago, where they are directors of the annual Chicago Duo Piano Festival.