Tracy Cowden: piano, vocal coach

Tracy Cowden, Associate Professor of Piano and Vocal Coach at Virginia Tech, has appeared as soloist with the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of Southwest Virginia, the Central Ohio Symphony Orchestra, and the Virginia Tech Symphonic Wind Ensemble. As a collaborative pianist, Tracy frequently performs with a diverse array of soloists and chamber ensembles, including recent concerts with tenor Paul Sperry, soprano Caroline Worra, oboist Joseph Robinson (retired principal oboe, New York Philharmonic), and fellow members of the Wintergreen Chamber Players at the Wintergreen Summer Music Festival. Tracy also recently recorded five new works for trumpet and piano with colleague John Adler on a CD titled Confronting Inertia, which was released by Origin Classical in October 2009. Tracy has previously performed with the Cavani Quartet, the Audubon Quartet, the Carpe Diem String Quartet, and the Marble Cliff Chamber Players, and in recitals with principal musicians from the Montreal, Vancouver, Boston, and Columbus symphony orchestras.

In addition to her work as a performer, Tracy was recently honored for her work as a teacher with a Certificate of Teaching Excellence from the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences at Virginia Tech. Also active as a clinician and lecturer, she has presented master classes and workshops on topics related to collaborative music-making and creative programming at national conferences for both the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) and the College Music Society (CMS), as well as in Virginia, Michigan, and Ohio. Most recently, Tracy presented a workshop on cross-disciplinary concert models at the CMS International Conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia. She has received two Faculty Research Awards from the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences at Virginia Tech to pursue creative programming ideas; the most recent resulted in the commission of a new set of songs by composer Gregory J. Hutter (a fellow Western Michigan University graduate) for soprano, cello, and piano, set to the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe, and premiered in November 2009. Tracy is a Nationally Certified Teacher of Music through MTNA, and also currently serves as Treasurer and Collaborative Chair of the Virginia Music Teachers Association. At the national level, she served on the planning committee for the 2009 MTNA National Conference.

A Michigan native, Tracy has previously served as a faculty member at Ohio Wesleyan University, Kalamazoo College and Hope College. She received the D.M.A. and M.M. degrees in Piano Accompanying and Chamber Music from the Eastman School of Music, and a B.M. degree in Piano Performance from Western Michigan University. Her principal teachers have included Jean Barr, Douglas Humpherys, Fernando Laires, and Phyllis Rappeport.