Check out highlights from our 2022 conference!

Friday, July 12 – Saturday, July 13, 2024

OMTA is heading back to Portland in 2024 to team up with one of our favorite organizations, Portland Piano International (PPI), for our annual conference! PPI will bring phenomenal performing talent alongside OMTA’s master presenters for a conference no teacher is going to want to miss. Located in the beautiful performing arts center on the PCC Sylvania campus in the wooded hills of Southwest Portland, this conference is guaranteed to stimulate and inspire you as you join your colleagues from across the state to collaborate, refine your teaching craft, and reenergize.

Location

Portland Community College, Sylvania Campus
Performing Arts Center
12000 Southeast, SW 49th Ave
Portland, OR 97219

Registration

Registration will open April 15.

Cost

EARLY BIRD PRICING (through May 31) Lunch is included with registration unless otherwise specified below.
  • OMTA Member Registration | $155
  • Family Member Pass | $65 (lunch not included)
  • New Member of MTNA and OMTA Registration | FREE (Joined after April 1, 2023)
  • Collegiate Student Registration | FREE (lunch not included)
  • Non-OMTA Member Registration | $190
PRICING (after May 31) Lunch is included with registration unless you sign up after the catering deadline of July 2 at 5:00pm PDT. (Or otherwise specified below.)
  • OMTA Member Registration | $190
  • Family Member Pass | $80 (lunch not included)
  • New Member of MTNA and OMTA Registration | FREE (Joined after April 1, 2023)
  • Collegiate Student Registration | FREE (lunch not included)
  • Non-OMTA Member Registration | $225

Registration includes access to attend all sessions and concerts, a printed conference program, as well as lunch on Friday and Saturday, unless otherwise specified. When not provided, lunches are available for purchase during registration before June 2 at 5:00pm PDT.

  • Friday’s lunch is a salad buffet with protein options.
  • Saturday’s lunch is a sandwich buffet with protein options.

Financial Incentives for OMTA Members

  • New members of OMTA/MTNA since April 1, 2023 receive free advance registration.
  • Room rebates of $50/night (3 night max) are available thanks to the Nellie Tholen Grant to help defray hotel costs for those living an extended distance from Portland. The application form will be in the registration packets at conference.

Lodging

Many local colleagues will be happy to host a guest for this conference, or we’ve reserved a block of rooms at a nearby hotel with a discounted rate just for you!

Crowne Plaza Lake Oswego
14811 Kruse Oaks Drive
Lake Oswego, OR

$134/night plus tax (Single King or Double Queen)
 
Use this link to access the discounted rate to make a reservation.

Advertise in the 2024 Conference Program

Conference registrants and advertisers benefit from a beautiful, printed program book available to all registrants. This full color program booklet, with a finished size of 8.5”x11”, includes schedules, artist bios, recital programs, annual honors, and more!

More Information 

Conference Vendors

Vendors are invited to join us in the lobby of the PCC Performing Arts Center throughout the entire two days of the conference. 

More Information 

Awards Banquet

We hope you’ll join us on Friday night for a special catered dinner overlooking Tualatin Lake at the atmospheric BRIX Tavern in Tualatin, OR. We’ll honor our lifetime membership award recipients and our 2025 Foundation Fellow. Don’t forget our silent auction and wall-of-wine raffle. Banquet options are below. Banquet tickets are available as an additional ticket option when you register and cost $47.00/person.

This will be a plated dinner with advance entrée selection required. Each entrée comes with BRIX Tavern artisan bread and a mixed local greens salad with with spiced hazelnuts, dried cranberries, sunflower seeds with served with Citrus Vinaigrette. Entrée selections include:

  • Alder Roasted Salmon: with citrus beurre blanc
  • Vegetarian Pasta: with fresh vegetables and roasted tomato sauce
  • Champagne Chicken: flour dusted with mushrooms and champagne tarragon cream

Dessert tickets are available as an add-on for $8 each. The dessert is a New York Style Cheesecake.

2024 Conference Presenters/Artists Bios

OMTA is honored to welcome the following acclaimed artists to our 2024 conference.

JANINA FIALKOWSKA

For 50 years, concert pianist Janina Fialkowska has enchanted audiences and critics around the world. She has been praised for her musical integrity, her refreshing natural approach and her unique piano sound thus becoming “one of the Grandes Dames of piano playing” (Frankfurter Allgemeine).

Born in Canada, she began her piano studies with her mother at age four continuing on in her native Montreal with Yvonne Hubert. In Paris she studied with Yvonne Lefébure and in New York at the Juilliard School with Sascha Gorodnitzki, experiencing the best of both French and Russian piano traditions. Her career was launched in 1974, when the legendary Arthur Rubinstein became her mentor after her prize-winning performance at his inaugural Master Piano Competition, calling her a “born Chopin interpreter” laying the foundation for her lifelong identification with this composer.

Since then, she has performed with the foremost orchestras worldwide under the baton of such conductors as Zubin Mehta, Bernard Haitink, Lorin Maazel, Sir Georg Solti, Sir Roger Norrington and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, to name one of the younger generation. She has won special recognition for a series of important premieres, notably Liszt’s newly discovered Third Piano Concerto with the Chicago Symphony and several contemporary piano concertos. Ms. Fialkowska’s discography includes many award-winning discs, e.g. the BBC Music Magazine’s 2013 “Instrumental CD of the Year” award as well as the Canadian “Juno Award” in 2018.

Her native Canada has bestowed upon her their highest honors: “Officer of the Order of Canada”, the “Governor General’s 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award in Classical Music” (Canada’s equivalent to the US Kennedy Centre Awards), as well as three honorary doctorates. She passes on her wide musical experience in master classes and at her annual “International Piano Academy” in Bavaria, where she now resides and makes frequent appearances as a juror of the world’s most prestigious piano competitions.

2020 began promising with another tour in North America featuring concerts in five Canadian provinces including a highly acclaimed recital at Salle Bourgie in Montreal as well as a recital at Willamette University in Oregon’s capital Salem, before the consequences of the corona epidemic stopped her tour cancelling her last two concerts. The subsequent lockdowns prevented numerous further engagements, although a brief loosening of the restrictions allowed her to return to the prestigious Klavier Festival Ruhr for an enthusiastically acclaimed recital in Dortumund (” … a real pianistic moment of glory …” Westallgemeine Zeitung) as well as to the Belfast International Arts Festival where she performed Beethoven’s piano concertos Nos. 3 and 4 in October of 2020.

On May 7, 2021 Ms Fialkowska celebrated her 70th birthday. Most of the concerts of her “Birthday Celebration Tour” were cancelled as well as the production of a new CD. Nevertheless, her birthday was heartily celebrated in the media worldwide. In November her autobiography “A Note in Time” (Novum Publishing, London UK) was released.

She was looking forward to a tour of a seven weeks in Canada and the US starting in late January of 2022. But yet again, Covid restrictions and logistics put a spanner in the works. What remained of this tour was a short one-week trip across the Atlantic in early March with two concerts for Portland Piano International in the US and a triumphant comeback recital for the Ottawa Chamber Festival.

At the end of April 2022 Janina Fialkowska went on a tour of four Canadian provinces starting in Halifax with Symphony Nova Scotia, followed by a recital in Quebec City for the Club Musical. After concerts with the Calgary Philharmonic she performed in Ontario at the Guelph Festival as well as for the in Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber Music Society and at the Hamilton Conservatory for the Arts and at Montreal’s Salle Bourgie ending in Saskatchewan with the Regina Symphony and a recital in Saskatoon for Gustin House. After that she returned to Europe to perform at the Berlin Piano Festival in Germany’s Capital as well as the prestigious Klavierfruehling Deutschlandsberg in Austria followed by several recitals in Germany and a concert with the Rijeka Symphony (Croatia). Highlights in 2023: Returning to the Klavierfestival Ruhr (Düsseldorf), a concert with the Cologne Chamber Orchestra, recitals in the UK as well as a tour of summer festivals and a winter tour in Ontario, Canada.

Discover more about Janina Fialkowska at https://www.fialkowska.com/.

CONNOR CHEE

Originally from Page, Arizona, Navajo pianist Connor Chee is known for combining his classical piano training with his Navajo heritage. Chee began piano lessons at age 6 with Sue Barney, and later Debbie Mitchell. At age 10, his family relocated to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he attended the School for Creative and Performing Arts. While there, he studied under Anna Weinstein and Simon Goykhman.

At age 12, Chee won a gold medal in the World Piano Competition’s Young Artist Division, earning him his first performance at New York City’s Carnegie Hall. In the following years, he went on to win multiple awards in the World Piano Competition, earning performances at the United Nations, and an international feature on CNN.

​While in Cincinnati, Chee performed with the Cincinnati Pops, the Hamilton-Fairfield Symphony Orchestra, and the Blue Ash Montgomery Symphony Orchestra. At Age 17, he graduated from the School for Creative and Performing Arts, and began studies at the Eastman School of Music under Professor Rebecca Penneys. Chee received his Bachelor of Music from Eastman in 2009, and went on to earn a master’s degree from the University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music, studying under Professor Elizabeth Pridonoff. Chee was awarded a First Prize in the 2016 Bradshaw & Buono International Piano Competition, and performed in the winners’ recital at Carnegie Hall.

Chee has released 3 studio albums of original pieces and piano transcriptions of Navajo music. The Navajo Piano won Best Instrumental Recording at the 16th Annual Native American Music Awards, and his piece “Beginnings” won Best New Age Song. ​In addition to winning Best Instrumental Recording, Chee was also nominated for Best New Artist and Record of the Year.

Chee’s most recent release, Scenes from Dinétah, features piano pieces written about elements of Navajo life and culture. It has been accompanied by the release of several music videos filmed on the reservation, directed by Navajo filmmaker Michael Etcitty Jr.

​Chee is currently a voting member of The Recording Academy (the GRAMMY® Awards), and continues to perform throughout the United States. He is currently located in Phoenix, Arizona.

Discover more about Connor Chee at https://www.connorchee.com/.

KATE BOYD

An active soloist and chamber musician, American pianist Kate Boyd has performed solo recitals at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, Schubert’s birth house in Vienna, the National Concert Hall in Dublin, the Musikhalle Hamburg, in addition to many places throughout the US, Europe and Canada. As a faculty member at Butler University, she has appeared as a soloist with each of the University’s large ensembles in performances ranging from Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy to Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.

Dr. Boyd’s first solo CD, Music for the End of Winter (Ravello), consists of previously-unrecorded works for solo piano by composers Daniel Koontz, Michael Schelle, Frank Felice, Howard Frazin and John Halle. Her most recent solo CD, Sonatas and Interludes by John Cage (Navona), was met with critical acclaim and has received hundreds of thousands of downloads and streams to date.

For more than ten years, Dr. Boyd was a founding member of the New York-based Oracle Trio, a trio that performed works from the 18th century to the present. She has performed dozens of chamber music works, including a televised performance of George Crumb’s Music for a Summer Evening, for two pianos and two percussionists; and John Corigliano’s Chiaroscuro, for two pianos tuned a quarter tone apart. In addition to her work as a soloist and chamber musician, Boyd has performed in multimedia collaborations with other disciplines, including the Orbit Dance Centre dance troupe in Northern Ireland and live performances with the dance program at Butler University. 

As an educator, Boyd has presented lectures and workshops at state, regional, and international conferences, including the International John Cage Conference in Malaysia, the European Piano Teachers Association International Conference in Germany, MTNA National Conferences, the College Music Society Great Lakes Regional Conference, and various state conferences. As an adjudicator, she has judged for events including the Walgreens National Concerto Competition, the ISSMA state competition, the MTNA Southern Division Competitions, and Stickley Piano Competition. For three years Dr. Boyd served on the national Fulbright screening committee for piano applicants. She regularly gives invited masterclasses and workshops to students through teacher organizations and universities, and has worked with students of all ages.

Boyd received the 2019 Teacher of the Year award from the Indiana Music Teachers Association and the 2017 Outstanding Professor of the Year award from Butler University, a Creative Renewal Fellowship from the Arts Council of Indianapolis (2009), and an Indiana Arts Commission Grant. Other awards and prizes include a Fulbright scholarship and fellowships at the Tanglewood Center, Blossom Music Center, the Banff Centre for the Arts, and Prussia Cove (England).

Boyd received her Bachelor of Music from Oberlin Conservatory, her Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts from Stony Brook University, and a Diploma from the Hannover (Germany) Academy of Music. She also received a Fulbright Grant to attend the Cologne (Germany) Academy of Music. Major teachers include Gilbert Kalish, Arie Vardi, Arbo Valdma, and Sedmara Rutstein. In addition to her major teachers, she received extensive coachings and attended residential masterclasses with Leon Fleisher, Peter Serkin, Gyorgy Sebok, John Perry, Reinbert DeLeeuw, and Ronald Copes, among others.

Kate Boyd is Professor of Piano and Piano Area Coordinator at Butler University. For eleven summers she taught at the internationally-renowned Interlochen Arts Camp in northern Michigan, where she was head of piano faculty for four of those years. Before coming to Butler, she was on the faculty of Heidelberg University, in Tiffin, Ohio, and for ten summers taught at Kinhaven Music School, in Weston, Vermont.

In 2021, Dr. Boyd started a YouTube Channel, The Piano Prof, where she uploads instructional videos geared toward high school, collegiate, graduate, and adult amateur pianists, as well as piano teachers. You can find it here.

Dr. Boyd sends a weekly newsletter with practice tips, updates on her performance schedule, and more. You can subscribe to the newsletter here.

Discover more about Kate Boyd at https://www.kateboyd.com/.

See you in Portland!