St. Olaf Piano Academy Faculty
Kathryn Ananda-Owens
Winner of first prize in the 1993 Neale-Silva Young Artists Competition, Kathryn Ananda-Owens enjoys an active career as performer and teacher. A laureate of the American Pianists Association Biennial Fellowship Competition, she made her Asian debut in 1997 under the auspices of the government of Macao. She has performed as a soloist with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, toured internationally as piano soloist with the St. Olaf Orchestra and has appeared at Lincoln Center. A founding member of the New Horizons Chamber Ensemble, Ananda-Owens also performs with the Melius Trio and recently collaborated with members of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in the inaugural concerts of the North American Bridge Festival. She received degrees from Oberlin College, Oberlin Conservatory and the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University, where she studied with Julian Martin. Her concerts have been broadcast on radio and television on three continents and recorded on the Westmark label.
Christopher Atzinger
Christopher Atzinger has performed in New York at Carnegie Hall (Weill) and New York University, and in Washington, Boston, Baltimore, Austin, Little Rock, Ann Arbor, Monticello, and Salisbury, Maryland. His artistry has also been broadcast on the radio program Live from WFMT on Chicago's classical music station. European performances include recitals in Toulouse and Carcassonne, France, in conjunction with Foundation La Gesse, and a concert tour of the Valencia region of Spain. Atzinger was the Gold Medalist of the 50th annual Nina Plant Wideman International Piano Competition and has received honors from the Frinna Awerbuch International Piano Competition, the National Society of Arts and Letters, the Music Teachers National Association Competition, and the Sydney Wright Memorial Accompaniment Competition. He also received the Presser Music Award from the Theodore Presser Foundation. Active in competitions abroad, Atzinger won the Premio Città di Ispica prize with special recognition for his performance of music by Samuel Barber at the IBLA Grand Prize Competition in Ragusa-Ibla, Italy. In addition to degrees from the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Michigan, he earned the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in piano performance from the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University where he studied with Julian Martin and Robert McDonald. His teachers include Anton Nel, David Renner, Carolyn Lipp and Logan Skelton and he has engaged in collaborative studies with Timothy Lovelace. Atzinger previously taught at Dickinson College (Penn.) and the Peabody Conservatory.
Andrew Hisey
Andrew Hisey holds degrees in piano from Wilfrid Laurier University and from The University of Michigan. He was a member of the piano faculty at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music in Ohio from 1994 to 2005. A native of Canada, Hisey was the 1988 Ontario Young Artist Competition winner and has performed throughout that province and in many venues across the Midwestern United States. He won the University of Michigan's graduate concerto competition in 1992 and recently soloed with the Oberlin Wind Ensemble in Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. He has performed the complete cycle of Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87, by Dmitri Shostakovich. Hisey is in frequent demand as adjudicator, lecturer and performer and his workshops have been enthusiastically received by local piano teacher groups and at state and national conventions. He is one of the founding directors of the National Group Piano and Piano Pedagogy Forum, is a member of Canada's Royal Conservatory of Music College of Examiners, and serves as series editor for the Composer Editions series from the Frederick Harris Music Company.
Kent McWilliams
Kent McWilliams holds degrees in piano performance from the University of Toronto and from the University of Montreal. He lived in Poland for a year, where he studied with Andrzej Jasinski and researched the Polish folk elements in Chopin's mazurkas and polonaises. He also studied in Germany, where he earned an Artist Diploma with highest distinction under pianist Oleg Maisenberg at the Stuttgart Musikhochschule. McWilliams has enjoyed a successful concert career, performing in over a dozen countries and winning awards and competitions of Porto (Portugal), the Regina Symphony, the Canadian Music Competitions and the Canadian National Competitive Festival of Music. Also active as a clinician, he has presented performance and pedagogy workshops across North America. He performs and records chamber music as a member of the Meridian Trio. McWilliams joined the faculty at St. Olaf after holding teaching positions at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada, and at the Glenn Gould Professional School in Toronto.
Nancy Paddleford
Nancy Paddleford has earned degrees at Indiana University and the University of Minnesota. Her teachers have included Gyorgy Sebok, Alfonso Montecino and Bernhard Weiser, and she has studied chamber music with Janos Starker, Joseph Gingold, William Primrose and Franco Gulli. Active as chamber and solo recitalist as well as adjudicator at piano competitions in the United States and Central America, Paddleford's teaching areas include piano performance, chamber music, music appreciation, theory skills and piano pedagogy. Her research emphases have been Hispanic music, performance practice and memorization techniques. Paddleford has served as artist-in-residence at the University of Costa Rica, has performed twice at the International Festival of Music in Costa Rica and three times at that country's Monteverde Music Festival. She is the recipient of the Pro Lingua Award for promoting cross-cultural understanding between the United States and Latin America and she was asked to give a St. Olaf Mellby Lecture about her scholarly work. A number of her performances and interviews have been broadcast on radio in the United States and abroad.