Saundra Schiller

New York based collaborative pianist Saundra Schiller is active as both a recitalist and vocal coach.

Current projects include a May recital with clarinet, singers, and violin featuring Der Hirt auf dem Felsen, Des Knaben Wunderhorn, and Ravelʼs violin sonata, as well as an upcoming production of Faust, directed by Thomas Muraco and New York City Operaʼs Alan Hicks. In addition to her coaching duties, she is arranging and performing a two- piano reduction and previously did the same for a 2011 production of Lucia di Lammermoor with Brazilian director Livia Sabag.

Recently Ms. Schiller accompanied Martha Guth, 2007 winner of the Wigmore Hall International Song Competition, in a Vancouver recital. She has performed the celesta in Respighiʼs Trittico Botticelliano and in Mozartʼs Die Zauberflöte, in collaboration with conductor Daniel Myssyk; her orchestral experience also includes Shostakovichʼs Symphony No. 5, as well as Pucciniʼs Suor Angelica.
Through her intensive training and collaborations in piano trios and quartets at the Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival in Vermont, she gained invaluable knowledge
through the expertise and mentoring of chamber musicians such as Kevin Lawrence, Alexander Ezerman and Paul Orgel. Ms. Schiller incorporated her love for performing chamber music in many interactive recitals, especially in retirement homes in Virginia. In these recitals she and her colleagues would perform classical chamber music as well as standard popular songs, giving the elderly audiences the opportunity to sing along to their old favorites. Her background also entails a range of choral singing, including Carmina Burana during the Beijing Olympics with the National Chinese Orchestra conducted by Dr. John Guthmiller. During her high-school days, she was very active as a singer and pianist in her schoolʼs nationally competing and touring show-choirs and concert choirs. Ms. Schiller received her bachelorʼs of music in piano performance at Virginia Commonwealth University with a “Friends of Music” scholarship, where she studied with Dr. Dmitri Shteinberg. As a presidentʼs scholarship recipient at Manhattan School of Music she is working towards her masterʼs degree in accompanying and vocal coaching, which she will receive in May of 2013. After being granted the Sorel scholarship in 2011 to fully cover her tuition and stay, she attended the Vancouver International Song Institute. There she was coached by renowned