Internationally known pianist to perform

Reid Alexander, Professor of Music at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will present a guest artist performance on Saturday, February 7, at 7:30 p.m. in Bradley University’s Dingeldine Music Center, located at 1417 W. Barker Avenue. The performance is free and open to the public. 

Dr. Alexander is internationally known as an accomplished pianist, inspiring teacher and mentor, and widely published author. After making his orchestral debut with the Fort Lauderdale Symphony Orchestra at the age of 16 under the baton of the highly respected conductor, Emerson Buckley, Dr. Alexander’s piano study continued with Arthur Loesser student, Gerald Snyder, and later the well-known Artur Schnabel student, Stanley Fletcher. Additional coaching has occurred with major artists such as Jack Radunsky, Kenneth Drake, Ruth Slenczynska, and Mieczyslaw Horszowski. As a finalist in the first Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition, his credits include recitals, presentations, and master classes in more than 40 states and Canadian provinces as well as countries abroad.

Professor Alexander recently returned from his third trip to Korea and Taiwan where he gave guest lectures, recitals and master classes at Tainan Technology University (Taiwan), Yonsei University, Sookmyung University, Sangmyung University, Ewha Women’s University, and Hansei University where he was the keynote speaker and featured recitalist-clinician for the annual meeting of that country’s prestigious Korean Association of Piano Pedagogy. In March he will perform in Segerstrom Concert Hall in Los Angeles and April the celebrated IBK Chamber Hall at the Seoul Arts Center in Korea.

As a doctoral graduate of Vanderbilt University and an long established author for Frederick Harris Music (Toronto) and Stipes Publishing (US), the past decade has seen the release of the highly regarded volumes of the Celebrate Composer Series (Harris), approximately 2,700 pages of solo piano music with supporting study notes and commentary in 27 volumes, multiple editions of the Celebration Series Handbook for Teachers (also Harris), and the 10th edition of Keyboard Musicianship, volumes I-II (Stipes). The new fifth edition of the standard bibliographic resource on piano teaching literature, Piano Repertoire Guide: Intermediate and Advanced Literature (Stipes) was premiered March 2011 at the annual convention of the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) and is presently being translated into Korean for future release by Sekwang Music Publishing in Seoul.

Earlier in his career, the University of Illinois honored Professor Alexander as a faculty recipient of an all-campus award for teaching excellence, recognizing his teaching versatility with pianists of all ages. Each academic year he works with a stellar class of remarkably talented international and domestic pianists on the Urbana campus and in the summer supervises the highly respected pre-collegiate piano camps for Illinois Summer Youth Music. Dr. Alexander’s former students hold many prestigious teaching positions in the U.S. and abroad with the most recent including high profile appointments at Bradley University, Valdosta State University (GA), Kennesaw State University (GA), Hansei University (Korea) and National Taiwan Normal University (Taipei). During the 1999-2000 academic year, Dr. Alexander served as Professor of Piano and Director of Piano Pedagogy at the prestigious program at The University of Oklahoma-Norman.

Call 309.677.2599 for more information.