Regan Russell
Pianist
| Years at Source: | 2021 |
|---|---|
| Biography: | Boston-based pianist Regan Russell is driven by a passion for musical collaboration, storytelling and scholarship, and joyful creativity. She is frequently engaged as a vocal, instrumental, and large-ensemble pianist, as well as a private piano instructor and vocal coach. In 2018, she joined the artistic team of VOICES Boston children’s choir as staff pianist, and spent summer 2019 on faculty at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute (BUTI) as a vocal coach and pianist for the Young Artists Vocal Program. The summer of 2018, she served as music director and pianist at Kidstock! Creative Theater, where she taught music classes, played weekly shows, and composed original musical numbers in conjunction with the camp’s young, creative minds. An active performer in the Boston community, Regan has collaborated with Boston University choirs, vocal and instrumental degree students at Boston University, the BU Opera Institute, MassOpera, Opera on Tap, and Suzuki string students at the Cambridge Music Consortium, where she also maintains her own private piano studio. In January 2019, she made her opera coaching debut with t.b.d.opera.projects as pianist and musical coach for Jake Heggie’s Three Decembers, directed by Sharon Daniels. The Boston Musical Intelligencer described her performance as “spectacular, full of subtlety and fire.” Previous show engagements include Johann Strauss’ Die Fledermaus (Opera Coeur d’Alene, MassOpera); Life is a Cabaret: The Songs of Kander and Ebb (Washington State University Opera Workshop); and Oliver! The Musical (Coeur d’Alene Christian Community Theater). As part of her position at BUTI, she also joined the Young Artist’s Chorus as Piano I in Carl Orff’s piano and percussion arrangement of Carmina Burana, which was performed in August 2019 at Seiji Ozawa Hall under the baton of Dr. Katie Woolf. Outside of performing, Regan enjoys both creative and academic writing. She presented her undergraduate honors thesis on depictions of water in the music of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, earning her a prestigious “Pass with Distinction” from the WSU Honors College. She plans to present her doctoral dissertation in fall 2021, a project on the 150 art songs of Canadian American composer Gena Branscombe. Regan’s innate love of words fuels her passion for music composition, which she views as a means of musical storytelling. Her 2012 self-produced album, Prism, features thirteen original compositions that explore different facets of color. She is currently collecting a repertoire of original Preludes for solo piano. Regan is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa and Pi Kappa Lambda honor societies and graduated summa cum laude from Washington State University in 2016 (BM Piano Performance), where she studied with Drs. Jeffrey and Karen Savage. She earned her Master of Music in Collaborative Piano from Boston University in 2018, and is continuing her studies there as a DMA candidate in collaborative piano. |
| Website: | www.reganrussellpiano.com |