Biography
Deborah H. H
ow, is a candidate for the Ph.D. degree in historical musicology at the USC Thornton School of Music and will defend her doctoral dissertation, "Arnold Schoenberg's Piano Suite, Op. 25: Paradoxes and Innovations in Music after World War I," in summer 2008. She was a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Music History & Literature at USC in 2007-08 and is a past recipient of USC’s highest academic award, the All-University Predoctoral Merit Fellowship. Deborah is a musicologist specializing in the works of Arnold Schoenberg and was a research associate at the Arnold Schoenberg Institute at USC before its move to Vienna; she received an Avenir Foundation Research Grant to conduct research at the Archives of the Arnold Schoenberg Center in Vienna in June 2007. Deborah received the M.A. degree in music (ethnomusicology: music of Asian theater) from the UCLA School of Music and studied with the Grand Kabuki of Tokyo while in residence at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Theatre & Dance. She graduated from the External Examination (Honors) Program at Swarthmore College with the B.A. degree in music and theater studies (scenic design). Deborah is a member of the Pi Kappa Lambda and Phi Kappa Phi Honor Societies.
She previously studied piano with Sharon Lipman (Los Angeles) and Charles Abramovic (Philadelphia) and is currently coached by Antoinette Perry (USC/Los Angeles). Deborah enjoys chamber music and performs locally with various colleagues, including pianist Sylvie Ollivier Moreland. She has been accepted into the Royal Conservatory of Music College of Examiners Apprentice Program.
Deborah has also been on the music faculty (piano) at Mount St. Mary's College in Brentwood and currently teaches music history and keyboard literature at the Aube Tzerko Piano Academy at New Roads High School in Santa Monica. She has taught at Crossroads School, The Odyssey Program, Menorah Academy, and Ohr Eliyahu Academy/Streisand School. Deborah is a certified Orff-Schulwerk teacher and has expertise in working with children with special needs. She is the co-founder and director of Kinanthi World Music for Youth (currently on hiatus), which, in conjunction with the UCLA Department of Ethnomusicology, has offered ensemble classes in Javanese gamelan and Balinese gamelan, group lessons in African Drumming, and workshops in Israeli/Yiddish Dance.
Deborah is an active classical piano teacher and chamber music coach in Santa Monica. Her students have been winners at numerous prestigious events, including the Asia America Symphony Association Scholarship Competition, ESMMF Glendale Piano Competition, CAPMT State Honors and District III Honors Auditions, CAPMT State and District III Bartok & Contemporary Music Festival Auditions, CAPMT District III Piano Auditions, MTAC State Concerto/Solo Competition, MTAC State Panel Finals Auditions, MTAC-WLA Robert Turner Piano Concerto Competition (performing with the Los Angeles Doctors Symphony Orchestra), MTAC-WLA Alice Frazier Kitchen Memorial Scholarship Competition, MTAC-WLA Piano Trio Competition, Southwestern Youth Music Festival (SYMF)-Qualified, Open, & Young Pianist Categories, Southern California Junior Bach Festival (SCJBF)-Branch, Region IV, and Complete Works Auditions, Young Musicians Foundation Scholarship Program, Antelope Valley College Bach Festival, Cypress College Piano Festival, MTNA State Composition Contest, MTAC Composers Today Young Composers Guild, MTAC State Composition Contest, and ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composers Contest.
Her students also participate in the Royal Conservatory of Music Examinations, MTAC Certificate of Merit Evaluations, MTAC-WLA Contemporary and Romantic Music Festivals, and NGPT Piano Playing Guild Auditions, and they have been presented in the master classes of Igor Kipnis, Laurette Goldberg, William Grant Naboré, Mark Zeltser, Max Levinson, Hans Boepple, Robert Lehrbaumer, Aiko Onishi, Robert Ward, David Shimoni, Dr. Stephen Perry, Zitta Zohar, Dr. Jean-David Coen, Dr. Young-Sook Kim, Dr. Scott McBride Smith, Dr. Lino Rivera, Dr. Barbara Lester-Sink, Kevin Fitz-Gerald, and Sharon Lipm
an.
Committed to community service, Deborah devotes half her waking hours to volunteer work. She is the co-founder and president of the Westside Music Foundation (WMF: www.westsidemusicfoundation.org), a 501(c)(3) public charity dedicated to excellence in music education and making the highest quality lessons available to all students, regardless of financial ability to pay. She is the volunteer music director and recorder instructor at St. Anne School, a Title I, K-8 school in Santa Monica, where the WMF has established an instrumental music program with instruction in Orff-Schulwerk, recorder, and acoustic guitar. She is also the chair of the WMF Robert Turner Piano Concerto Competition and the WMF Santa Monica College Concerto Competition. Deborah was president of the Music Teachers' Association of California, West Los Angeles Branch (MTAC-WLA) from 1999-2005 and treasurer from 2005-2006. She is currently the MTAC-WLA webmaster and also serves as chair of Information Technology & Services, chair of the Alice Frazier Memorial Scholarship Competition, and chair of the Contemporary Music Festival; she is the MTAC
Young Composers Guild program State Chair (www.mtac.org)
and the MTNA Composition Competition State Chair for California (www.mtna.org).
Deborah is the Center Coordinator for the National Music Certificate Program of the Royal Conservatory of Music Examinations program in West Los Angeles, and she is a MusicLink teacher, accepting talented and dedicated students on need-based financial scholarship. Deborah also enjoys her work as an alumni interviewer for prospective students applying for admission to Swarthmore College and running information booths for Swarthmore at local College Fairs; she is honored to volunteer as a regional coordinator for alumni interviewers in the Los Angeles Metro area for the Swarthmore College Admissions Office.
Deborah lives in Santa Monica and is married to queueing theorist and distributed systems engineer Brian Tung; they have two children, boys ages 13 and 5, and six pianos.
aka Deborah How aka Debby How |
Copyright 2008
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