Whether they choose to play solo, accompany a choir, or play hymns for a church, the South Carolina School of the Arts piano performance grads are well tuned for a career in music.
The Bachelor of Music degree in Piano Performance trains students to become performing musicians. While graduates also are prepared to teach other keyboardists, their own skills are constantly challenged and nurtured in the classroom and onstage.
Within the Piano Performance program, students can add the Concentration in Piano Pedagogy, which prepares them in piano instruction and running a private music studio. Graduates could join an established music academy or start a new one.
Piano Faculty
Howard Kim
Howard Kim is an Associate Professor of Music at the South Carolina School of the Arts and director of the AU Piano Ensemble. Concert pianist, collaborative artist, vocal coach, and conductor, Dr. Kim received his early piano training from master teacher Dorothy Hwang at the R.D. Colburn School of Performing Arts. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in piano performance from the University of California-Los Angeles, studying under Antoinette Perry and Aube Tzerko. While completing the Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees in piano performance and literature under the tutelage of Rebecca Penneys at the Eastman School of Music, he was awarded the Performer’s Certificate. Dr. Kim has won numerous awards and honors and has performed in California, New York, Florida, North Carolina, and Canada. He has been the featured soloist with orchestras, most recently the Fayetteville Symphony Orchestra. He was a member of the Mallarmé Chamber Players and served as the keyboardist for the Fayetteville Symphony Orchestra and the Fayetteville Jazz Orchestra.
Lisa Kiser
Lisa Kiser began her studies at age four under the tutelage of her mother, also a pianist. She made her orchestral debut at ten years old in Daegu, South Korea, performing Chopin’s First Piano Concerto. She attended Yonsei University and received a graduate degree in piano performance from Webster University in St. Louis. While there, she received a third place award in the St. Louis Symphony’s Young Artists Scholarship Competition, and the St. Louis Artist Society chose her as best artist. Currently she is a finishing her Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the University of South Carolina under the tutelage of Dr. Charles Fugo. She is currently a piano faculty member at Anderson University and formerly at the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities. She has performed across the state as a solo and collaborative artist with the Greenville Symphony Orchestra, the Fountain Inn Symphony Orchestra, and others. A respected teacher in high demand, her students have won state level and national competitions.
David Kiser
David Kiser is an Adjunct Professor of Piano at The South Carolina School of the Arts where he teaches class piano and private lessons and gives lessons to master’s degree candidates in the online music education degree program. He received his master’s degree in piano performance at Converse College studying with Douglas Weeks. Formerly, he studied at the University of South Carolina with Charles Fugo and Marina Lomazov. He won first place in the first Genesis Piano Competition in Myrtle Beach. He is also a proud winner of the Carolina Youth Symphony Concerto Competition. As part of the Piccolo Spoleto Festival he performed Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 1 in Charleston and in Perugia and Spoleto, Italy. Kiser’s performances have been broadcast on South Carolina Public Radio, and he has performed throughout the state. He is a passionate teacher and his students have won at the local and state levels.
In addition to performing and teaching, Kiser produces and hosts On the Keys http://etvradio.org/programs/keys), an hour of keyboard music, for South Carolina Public Radio, heard in Greenville, Columbia, and Charleston on Thursday evenings and as a podcast on ITunes. Passionate about new music, he has featured compositions from the past ten years on his radio program and has also performed works by Greenville-based composer Jon Grier. As an initially self-taught organist, Kiser has been mentored by Converse College Organist Brennan Szafron. Kiser is the Organist at Buford Street United Methodist Church in Gaffney, South Carolina. With the director there, he has undertaken an ambitious video project to film and play the pipe organs of South Carolina. His wife, Lisa Kiser, is a well-known pianist and sought-after teacher.