2023 State Conference

LECTURE Presenters

Ingrid Clarfield , John Perry  and Rose McCathran will share their teaching philosophies and what they consider most important in sharing their teaching careers. They will also do short teaching demonstrations with their own and each other's students.   

(Scroll down for more info on the presenters)

“Kodaly Method on Piano Teaching”

 Sunday, November 19, 11:15am - 12:15pm                   

Péter Tóth will give a presentation on the music education system in Hungary, the Kodaly method and its application in piano teaching. He will play a few pieces to demonstrate how the Kodaly method integrates with piano playing.  

(Scroll down for more info on the presenter)

PRESENTER BIOS

Ingrid Jacobson Clarfield

Professor of Piano Emerita at Westminster Choir College of Rider University, Ingrid Jacobson Clarfield is a nationally recognized performer, lecturer and author. She has presented workshops, lecture-recitals, and master classes in over 150 cities in 40 states across North America, including State and National MTNA Conferences, National Conference of Keyboard Pedagogy, and other prestigious conferences and festivals. Professor Clarfield has written twenty-six books and is the subject of a documentary entitled: Take a Bow: the Ingrid Clarfield Story.

In 2006, Professor Clarfield was named MTNA Foundation Fellow and in 2009 was the 1st recipient of the NJMTA Teacher of the Year award.  In 2012, she was awarded the prestigious MTNA Teacher of the Year and in 2015 she received the NCKP Lifetime Achievement Award. She received the first Jacobs Music Steinway Al C. Rinaldi Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017. In 2018, the Music Educators Association of NJ also awarded her their Lifetime Achievement Award. Professor Clarfield was inducted into the first Steinway and Sons Teachers Hall of Fame in 2019.

Clarfield maintains a private studio where her pre-college students have won hundreds of awards in state, national, and international competitions resulting in performances in such venues as Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Weill Recital Hall, Kennedy Center, Merkin Concert Hall, Steinway Hall, and concert halls in Beijing. 19 of her students have won the MTNA Com-petition at the State Level, with 7 having won the Eastern Division progressing to the National Finals. One student, Damien Dixon, was the First Prize National Winner. Most significant to Professor Clarfield is her students’ involvement in community outreach concerts raising money for charities benefitting children and performing for nursing homes and other adult facilities.

John Perry

John Perry, distinguished artist and teacher, earned his bachelor's and master's degrees at the Eastman School of Music and was a student of Cecile Genhart. During those summers, he worked with the eminent Frank Mannheimer. Recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, he continued studies in Europe for four years where he worked with Wladyslav Kedra, Polish concert artist and professor at the Akedmie Für Musik in Vienna, and Carlo Zecchi, renowned conductor, pianist, and head of the piano department at the Santa Cecilia Academy of Music in Rome.

Mr. Perry has won numerous awards including the highest prizes in both the Busoni and Viotti international piano competitions in Italy and special honors at the Marguerite Long International Competition in Paris. Since then, he has performed extensively throughout Europe and North America to great critical acclaim. Also a respected chamber musician, Mr. Perry has collaborated with some of the finest instrumentalists in the world.           

He also enjoys an international reputation as a teacher, presenting master classes throughout the world. He often is a jury member at some of the most prestigious international piano competitions. His students have been prize winners in most major competitions and include two first-prize winners in the Rubinstein, four first-prize winners in the Music Teacher’s National Association national competition, and first-prize winners in the Naumburg National Chopin competition, Beethoven Foundation competition, the Federated Music Clubs, and the YKA, AMSC, the Washington Friday Morning Musical, and YMF competitions, and finalists in the Chopin International in Warsaw, the Van Cliburn, the Queen Elisabeth, Busoni, Viotti, Leipzig Bach Competition, and the Three Rivers Competition.

Mr. Perry is Professor of Piano at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, Professor of Piano at the California State University of Music Northridge, Professor Emeritus of Piano at the Thornton School of Music of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and summer faculty at the Banff Center in Alberta, Canada. Also, during the summer, is an artist-teacher at the Aspen Music Festival and School, the Morningside Bridge Program at Mount Royal College in Calgary, the Montecito California Festival, the Amalfi Festival, the Perugia Music Festival, and the Lake Como Academy in Italy, the Orford Festival in Quebec, the Sarasota Florida Music Festival, the Sommer Musik program in Cochem, Germany, and the Pymble Summer Music Festival in Sydney, Australia.

Rose McCathran

Pianist Rose McCathran is a teacher, lecturer, adjudicator, and performer who loves sharing her passion of music. She serves as a solo and collaborative artist and has given performances in the United States and Europe. Dedicated to teaching, she runs McCathran Piano Studio; a studio consisting of thirty-five students widely ranging in ages and levels. Her piano students have performed beautifully in studio recitals, won composition competitions, successfully fulfilled musicianship examinations, given full-length solo piano recitals, and enthusiastically participated in high level piano competitions and festivals, some of which have awarded her students solo and ensemble piano performances at Weill Recital Hall of Carnegie Hall in New York, at The Academy of Music of the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, and at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia University. While several of her intermediate and advanced students have continued to study piano professionally in college as majors, minors, and participants in ensembles, all of her students have continued to enjoy and love music.       

In October of 2022, Rose had the great honor of being a panelist at the Pedagogical Legacy Lecture and Masterclass honoring John Perry and Ingrid Clarfield. The program took place at Jacobs Music in Philadelphia and was cast to 6 locations around the US through Steinway's Spirio system. Rose has also presented lectures and lecture recitals to undergraduate music majors at Harvard University, to graduate students at Westminster Choir College, to adult students at Westminster Conservatory of Music, and to open audiences in and around Princeton, New Jersey. Recently, she presented "Celebrating Female Composers of African Heritage in Western Classical Music", which featured the works of Florence Price, Nora Holt, Eva Jessye, Shirley Graham Du Bois, Julia Perry, Evelyn Simpson-Curenton, and Nkeiru Okoye.

With a great interest for science and medicine, Rose recently performed music of Mozart at a neuroscience lecture in New York City, where listening to Mozart's music was being discussed as a successful therapy treatment for epilepsy.        

In demand as a piano adjudicator and clinician, Rose has served on the panels for The Greater Princeton Steinway Society, Music Fest's Rising Talents Competition, The Delaware Valley Music Club, The New Jersey Music Teachers Association. A chorister as well, Rose has performed in the Westminster Choir and the Westminster Symphonic Choir at Carnegie Hall, the Lincoln Center, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, and the Kimmel Center with the world’s leading orchestras and conductors.            

Rose holds a Master of Music degree and a Bachelor of Music degree in Piano Performance and Pedagogy from Westminster Choir College of Rider University, where she studied under internationally renowned teacher and pianist Ingrid Clarfield. Rose is a Nationally Certified Teacher of Music (NCTM) and has served on the distinguished faculty of the Westminster Choir College Piano Pedagogy Certificate Program, where she taught courses in piano technique. She also served as a member of the Artist Piano Faculty at the Westminster Conservatory in Princeton, New Jersey. In 2021, she joined the Virtual Music Cohort at Shanti Bhavan School in India. In 2022, Rose became the chairperson for the Independent Music Teachers Forum for the New Jersey Music Teachers Association and worked to initiate the Advancing Professionals Network, a program designed to encourage teachers young in their careers to form mentorship with more experienced teachers, create and host fun and positive communal events, and be a go-to source for teaching advice and lecture/masterclass/festival experience. In the spring of 2023, Rose became Adjunct Faculty of Piano at Westminster Choir College of Rider University. In January 2023, Rose was honored as the recipient of the 2022 Top Teacher Award from Steinway & Sons.

Rose resides in Lawrenceville, New Jersey with her husband, composer, teacher, and pianist Ryan Brechmacher (ASCAP), and their beautiful sons, Mason and Liam.

Péter Tóth

Hungarian pianist Péter Tóth has concertized in many countries in Europe, including Hungary, Austria, Slovakia, Germany, Russia, France, Holland, Spain, Italy, and Switzerland. In addition, he performed in Japan, South Korea, Peru, Costa Rica, China, Australia, and the United States. His recent Carnegie Hall debut solo recital was hailed by the New York Concert Review as “music-making of true passion and intelligence.”

As a competitor, Dr. Toth has won top prizes at numerous piano competitions, such as the American Paderewski Piano Competition (2013), the Franz Liszt International Piano and Voice Competition in Los Angeles (2010), and the Franz Liszt International Piano Competitions in Budapest (2001) and Weimar (2000). His first released CD recording won the Grand Prize of the Hungarian Liszt Society (2006). He also won a special award for the best performance of a major romantic work by his outstanding interpretation of Brahms’s First Piano Sonata at the Southern Highland International Piano Competition in Australia (2011). In 2013, he retired from competing, dedicating himself entirely to the concert stage. 

Dr. Toth is a regular guest artist at various piano festivals, such as the Festival de Musique au Château d’ Excideuil and the Festival Musique en Vallée du Tarn in France. He is also a frequent jury member in both national and international piano competitions. He has been member of the American Liszt Society since 2011.

Dr. Toth has lived in the United States since 2009. He has recently earned his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Piano Performance at the University of Texas at Austin, where he was a student of Anton Nel (2012-2015). He also completed an artist diploma program at Texas Christian University under the tutelage of Tamas Ungar (2009-2012). Prior to moving to the United States, he had studied at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music (major teachers include Gyorgy Nador, Balazs Reti, and Laszlo Bihary) and the Bela Bartok Music Conservatory (major teacher: Jozsef Csontos) in his native Hungary. His scholarly activities have included the investigation of the progressive harmonic language of Franz Liszt’s piano music. His scientific work, “Symmetrical Pitch Constructions in Liszt’s Piano Music”, was published in the Spring of 2016.

In spite of being a strong advocate of Franz Liszt’s music, Dr. Toth has a wide and diverse repertoire, ranging from J.S. Bach to contemporary music, with a particular focus on the piano music of the 19th century. He is an enthusiastic interpreter of the works of Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, and Brahms.

Dr. Toth is a piano faculty member at Fairleigh Dickinson University (Madison, New Jersey).