Amanda Gessler, piano

• In addition to over a decade of private teaching experience, Ms. Gessler has taught undergraduate piano and music courses at Indiana Unversity, Lawrence Conservatory, and Shenandoah Conservatory. She welcomes students ages six and above. 

 

Amanda Gessler is known for her deeply insightful and emotionally charged performances across the United States and Europe. As a First Prize Winner of the Bradshaw & Buono International Piano competition, she made her Carnegie Hall debut in May, 2014.  She embraces a broad repertoire and enjoys a special connection with the music of the great German composers, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert.

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Hailing from rural northern Wisconsin, Ms. Gessler found an intense attachment to music at an early age.  As the first musician in her family, she discovered Beethoven on a cassette tape featuring piano music with nature sounds in the background, which she played so many times that she had to rewind it by hand. The long winters and isolation provided the perfect setting to develop a deeply personal relationship with the great solo works of the piano literature.

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She was first noticed as a prizewinner in the Chicago Symphony Concerto Competition at age sixteen, and received a full scholarship to study at the Interlochen Summer Arts Academy. She has since traveled widely and given performances at the Aspen Music Festival, the Duxbury Festival in Massachusetts, the Institute for European Studies in Vienna and the Wilhelm Kempff Foundation Beethoven Course in Positano, Italy. She is a laureate of the MTNA Steinway Young Artist Competition and her performances have been broadcast on Colorado Public radio and on Irish National Television in the documentary film "Beethoven Bootcamp”.

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Gessler earned a Bachelor of Music degree magna cum laude under Anthony Padilla at the Lawrence Conservatory of Music in Appleton, Wisconsin and a Master of Music at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music under Distinguished Professor, Menahem Pressler. She currently resides in Aspen, Colorado where she is an active performer and teacher. She continues her studies with John O’Conor at Shenandoah University in Winchester, Virginia.