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Biography

Deborah H. How, received the Ph.D. degree in historical musicology (dissertation: Arnold Schonberg's Prelude from the Suite of Piano, Op. 25: from Composition with Twelve Tones to the Twelve-Tone Method) from the USC Thornton School of Music.  She has held positions as both a Teaching Fellow and Lecturer in the Department of Music History & Literature at USC and is a past recipient of USC’s highest academic award, the All-University Predoctoral Merit Fellowship.  Deborah was a research associate at the Arnold Schoenberg Institute at USC before its move to Vienna, and she received an Avenir Foundation Research Grant to conduct her dissertation research at the Archive of the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna.  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 and a member of the Mu Phi Epsilon International Music Fraternity.

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 is scheduled to appear as a concerto soloist with two local orchestras in the 2009-2010 season.  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 also an early childhood music specialist and gave a lecture, "Playing with Music: Music in Early Childhood Development, Ages 3-8," for the Applied Developmental Psychology program at UCLA in February 2009.

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, Max Levinson, Dr. Teresa McCollough, and Sharon Lipman.

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 Instrumental Music Program director and recorder instructor at Saint Anne School, a Title I, K-8 school in Santa Monica, where WMF and Crossroads School has jointly established weekly group music instruction in Orff-Schulwerk, recorder, and acoustic guitar.  She is also the chair of the WMF Robert Turner Piano Concerto Competition and was president of the Music Teachers' Association of California, West Los Angeles Branch (MTAC-WLA) from 1999-2005 and treasurer from 2005-2006.  Deborah is currently MTAC-WLA chair of Information Technology & Services, chair of the Alice Frazier Memorial Scholarship Competition, and chair of the Contemporary Music Festival.  In addition, Deborah is the current MTAC Young Composers Guild program State Chair (www.mtac.org) and the MTNA Composition Competition State Chair for California (www.mtna.org).  She is also the volunteer webmaster for several non-profit organizations, including the Westside Music Foundation, Love Taiwan Society, MTAC-WLA, and CAPMT District III.

Deborah is the Center Representative for the National Music Certificate Program of the Royal Conservatory of Music Examinations program in West Los Angeles and Santa Monica, 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.

Deborah lives in Santa Monica and is married to queueing theorist and distributed systems engineer Brian Tung; they have two children, boys ages 14 and 7, and six pianos.