Samantha Angstman, pianist Classical Pianist from Stony Brook, NY

Sammy Angstman is a native of Williston, VT, where she began taking piano lessons when she was seven. She studied classical piano with Paul Orgel and jazz piano with Tom Cleary in middle and high school, winning many awards including first prize in three concerto competitions, the VYOA Hermance Prize, and the Ellis Music Award. As a high school student, Sammy also worked with conductors Troy Peters, Lou Kosma, and Ronald Braunstein and participated in masterclasses with pianists John O'Conor (Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival), Svetozar Ivanov (GMCMF), and Jeewon Park (Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival). She maintains her musical ties to VT through occasional recitals there, and through her thriving summer teaching studio, where she teaches weekly private piano lessons between June and August. Sammy received her Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance from the New England Conservatory of Music, where she was a student of Bruce Brubaker. At NEC, she participated in chamber ensembles coached by John Heiss, Mai Motobuchi, Kristopher Tong, and Kenneth Radnofsky. She was also a member of NEC's Chamber Singers, led by conductor Erica Washburn, and has played in chamber performance classes led by Paul Biss, Stephen Drury, Eliot Fisk, Donald Palma, Roger Tapping, Vivian Weilerstein, and others. Sammy's performances at NEC include multiple performances of works by student composers in the Tuesday Night New Music and Contemporary Ensemble concert series, as well as solo appearances in NEC's piano department concerts "Lisztomania" and "Cage Festival" and her own senior recital in April 2013. Sammy is currently working towards her Master of Music in Piano Performance at Stony Brook University, where she studies with Christina Dahl and has also taken lessons with Gilbert Kalish, Ann Schein, and Oksana Ezhokina. She is active as an accompanist and chamber musician at Stony Brook: she performs in a piano-woodwind quintet coached by Pedro Diaz, Ann Ellsworth, Frank Morelli, and Christina Dahl, and accompanies multiple graduate student recitals and juries per year. In addition to her performance studies at Stony Brook, Sammy works for the school as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in a variety of roles: she teaches private lessons to undergraduates, serves as an accompanist, and is the Coordinator for the music department's annual Piano Project.