Dr. Elissa Miller-Kay is a pianist, music educator, and scholar specializing in Beethoven reception and nineteenth-century performance practices. She has performed in cities throughout North America and Southeast Asia, where she lived and worked from 2014 to 2020. Engagements have included solo recitals on the Phnom Penh Classical Concert Series and at the Bangkok International Piano Festival, as well as performances at Steinway Hall and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York City; the Beethoven Club in Memphis; and Markham Theater in Markham, Ontario. As a concerto soloist, she has appeared with the Mississauga Symphony, the Oakville Symphony, the Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber Orchestra, the York Symphony, and the Greater Toronto Philharmonic. Awards include first prize in the International Beethoven Piano Sonata Competition in Memphis, TN (2009) and the Ben Steinberg Musical Legacy Award (2006).

 

Dr. Miller-Kay was a full-time faculty member at the Princess Galyani Vadhana Institute of Music (PGVIM) in Bangkok, Thailand from 2016 to 2020, where she taught Piano Performance and Musicology, and she now continues to teach at PGVIM remotely on a part-time basis from Washington, D.C. She has previously taught at the New School for Music Study in Kingston, New Jersey and at New York University, where she was an adjunct instructor of piano and keyboard harmony.

 

Dr. Miller-Kay’s scholarship explores intersections of cultural values and performance practices, with a particular focus on the music of Beethoven. She has published papers and presented her work at several international conferences, including most recently, the Beethoven-Perspectives conference hosted by BTHVN 2020 and Beethoven-Haus in Bonn, Germany in February 2020.

 

Inspired by a desire to improve access to music education in Thailand, Dr. Miller-Kay created a beginner piano method book, “Piano, So Fun!” (เปียโนสนุกจัง) with the assistance of Surachoke Satraphai in 2018. She has made this book freely available to all online. Please visit pianosofun.com for more information.