Sylvia Kersenbaum

---

Sylvia Kersenbaum

Office: FAC 331

Phone: 270.745.5919

Email: sylvia.kersenbaum@wku.edu

Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Sylvia Kersenbaum began her musical training with her mother. Soon afterward, she became a pupil of the eminent teacher, Vincent Scaramuzza.

Miss Kersenbaum holds degrees in performance, pedagogy, and composition from the National Conservatory in Buenos Aires and Artists Diplomas from both the Academy of Santa Cecilia in Rome and the Academia Chigiana, Siena.

Miss Kersenbaum has appeared in recitals and as soloist with orchestras throughout Europe, the Far East, and North and South America. Noted orchestras include the London Symphony, Royal Philharmonic, Munchen Philharmoniker, Bayerische Staatskapelle, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the San Fransisco Symphony, and the Louisville Orchestra and with conductors Wolfgang Sawallisch, Jean Martinon, Gunter Herbig, Leopold Hager, Garcia Navarro and Lawrence Leighton Smith, to name but a few. Sylvia Kersenbaum recordings for the EMI-Angel label have won major international press acclaim.

Her version of Tchaikovsky's Concerto Op. 44 under Jean Martines was reissued on CD Sg EMI Europe and Liszt Hexameron was included in their series 100 Virtuosi of the 20th Century.

Sylvia has been a piano professor at Western since 1976. Her performances of Beethoven's thirty-two piano sonatas on campus and abroad were highly acclaimed. In 1990 she was awarded Honorary Membership of the American Beethoven Society and the WKU Faculty Award for Research and Creativity.

As a composer, Sylvia wrote the music for Edgar Allan Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death," which premiered as a ballet in October 2001 at the Capitol Theater (Bowling Green) in collaboration with the WKU Department of Theater and Dance.

In 2002 the Delta Omicron music fraternity named a scholarship after her. It was endowed and awarded in April 2005 to the first recipient, Jessica Carmichael Cunningham.