Susan Keith Gray
Susan Keith Gray is in demand as pianist, teacher, adjudicator and clinician. As a soloist, she has performed with orchestras throughout the southern and midwestern regions of the United States. Additional recognition as a collaborative pianist has led to recital performances with a number of artists including cellists Wendy Warner and Anthony Elliott, flutists Leone Buyse and Torkil Bye, and singers Carla Connors, Louis Otey, Scott Piper, Charsie Randolph Sawyer and Patricia Prunty. She has served on the Instrumental Accompanying Faculty at the Music Academy of the West and as staff accompanist for national competitions.
Gray holds degrees in solo piano and chamber music from Converse College, the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and The University of Michigan. Her teachers have included George Lucktenberg, Ian Hobson, Eckart Sellheim, and Martin Katz and additional work with Kenneth Drake, Theodore Lettvin, Louis Nagel and Jean Barr. As a member of the Kobayashi/Gray Duo (violin/piano), she has toured in South America and the West Indies as a United States Artistic Ambassador and in Norway, South Africa and throughout the United States. The Duo has actively performed, premiered, edited and lectured about the music of 19th-21st century women composers, leading to publications and a CD recordings of these works
In 2005, she was recipient of the prestigious Belbas-Larson Award for Excellence in Teaching given annually by the University of South Dakota. Her students of all age levels are frequent winners in local, regional or national solo and concerto competitions. Gray served as president of the South Dakota Music Teachers Association from 2002-04 and continues to hold positions of leadership in that organization.
