2020 Conference  Program Presenter

MARTHA HILLEY

President of MTNA

“Are Your Students Getting Their Money's Worth Out of Repertoire?”

Martha Hilley joined the faculty of The University of Texas School of Music in 1982 as coordinator of group piano and a member of the piano pedagogy faculty. Over the next 36 years she served two years as head of the keyboard division, five years as Associate Director of the School of Music as well as two different five-year terms as Director of Undergraduate Studies. Hilley was twice Chair of the University of Texas Faculty Council and served on a multitude of committees and task forces university-wide. Martha retired from the Butler School of Music on August 31, 2019.

Over the last 49 years in higher education, Ms. Hilley has been an active participant in workshops, conferences and seminars on the international, national, state and local levels. She has been co-curriculum coordinator with Lynn Freeman Olson and presenter for the International Pedagogy Workshops in Italy, Belgium, Norway, Australia, Austria and Hawaii and served as pedagogy faculty for the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival in Alaska and Tunghai University's Summer Keyboard Institute in Taichung, Taiwan. She was keynote speaker and presenter for the 2013 Encontro Internacional de Piano ed Grupo in Goiania, Brazil. In September of 2014, Hilley was fortunate enough to be an attendee at the Polofonia Conference held at the Royal Conservatory of the Hague. The theme of the conference was "The Musician as Creative Entrepreneur." In more recent years Martha has been a co-presenter at CEPROM, a pre-conference meeting to ISME and a co-presenter at the following ISME Conference in Glasgow, Scotland. She was also a keynote speaker at the 2018 SEMPRE Conference in London, England.

Professor Hilley's abilities as a teacher were recognized in 1983 when she received the Texas Excellence Teaching Award, and again in 1988 when she was awarded one of four university-wide Dad's Association Centennial Fellowships for excellence in undergraduate teaching. In 1992, Professor Hilley was recipient of the prestigious Orpheus Award presented by Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia in recognition of her contributions to the field of music. In 1997, she was awarded the Outstanding Collegiate Teacher Award by the Texas Music Teachers Association and in 1998, Hilley was awarded the William David Blunk Professorship in recognition of outstanding undergraduate teaching and research. In 2000, she was chosen for membership in Leadership Texas and was elected in September of 2000 to the Leadership Texas Alumni Board of Directors. Hilley was inducted into the Academy of Distinguished Teachers at UT Austin in 2005 and awarded the Distinguished Service Award from the Music Teachers National Association in the spring of 2008. She was named recipient of the University of Texas at Austin Civitatis Award for 2011-2012 and named the 2014 MTNA Teacher of the Year. Martha is the 2019-2021 President of MTNA.

Articles by Professor Hilley have been published in Clavier, Piano Quarterly and Keyboard Companion and with anthologies published by Routledge Press. She is co-author of two college piano texts: "Piano for the Developing Musician " and "Piano for Pleasure." The texts were the first to embrace digital sequencer technology through disks furnished to teachers as well as the first to provide web-based computer tutorials, downloadable pdf and mp3 files and dedicated web sites for each text.