Antoinette Van Zabner

Antoinette
Van Zabner began her musical studies at the age of four and at five won her
first competition on the Canadian Broadcasting System. At 13, Miss Van Zabner
was awarded a scholarship to study piano with Jean and Robert Casadesus and
harmony with Nadia Boulanger in Fontainebleau,
France. She
made her first orchestra appearance at 16, after winning the Rhode Island
Concerto Competition. At Vassar
College, where she
studied with Blanca Uribe, she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and was named
Presser Scholar for her assiduous work in pursuit of excellence in the field of
music. At the Yale School of Music she studied with Ward Davenny, receiving her
Master's degrees in Music and
Musical Arts.

She
won, among other awards for outstanding performance, a Fulbright Grant for
piano study at the Hochschule fuer Musik in Vienna, Austria,
where she studied with Dieter Weber and Hans Graf and earned her Diploma in
piano performance. Miss Van Zabner has taken part in master classes with such
distinguished pianists as Byron Janis, Gina Bachauer and Claude Frank. She also
studied with Philippe Entrement and Gaby Casadesus at the Ravel Academy
in St. Jean de Luz where she performed with the Toulouse Orchestra under the
direction of Michel Plasson.

Miss
Van Zabner made her American debut in 1982 at the Pan American Union, Washington, D.C., her London debut at Wigmore
Hall and her Viennese debut at the Konzerthaus. She has appeared in the Vienna
Summer Music Festival, the Vienna International Festival, in the Festival Klangbogen,
the Norfolk Music Festival in Connecticut, the
Golden Hall of the Vienna Musikverein and with her piano duo in the Grand Hall
of the Konzerthaus, the Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing
and the Frutillar Festival in Frutillar,
Chile.

Miss
Van Zabner has toured with the Slovakian Chamber Orchestra, the Prague Virtuosi
and the Niederösterreichisches Tonkuenstler Orchestra and performed with her
piano-duo partner Waltraud Wulz throughout Europe, Japan, Chile, the United States and China
where they opened the Olympics with a Viennese program named „Tales from
Vienna“

In
the United States, Miss Van
Zabner has judged various piano competitions and has given master classes and
chamber music concerts at Brown University, Converse
College, Furman
University, Emory University,
St.John’s College and the South Carolina Governor's
School for the gifted in the arts. She is a professor of piano for the Toho
Vienna Academy of Music, a branch of the Toho College of Music in Tokyo, Japan
and regularly gives master classes internationally. She has a full
professorship in piano at the University
of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna, Austria.

As an
accompanist, she has worked with such renowned artists as Nigel Rogers,
Patricia Wise, Peter Matzka, the
Istropolis Quintett, the Amadeus Ensemble, and the Koehne Quartett. Ms. Van
Zabner works closely with the Austrian Organisation of Contemporary Composers
for which she has premiered countless works for the National Austrian
Broadcasting-Station ORF.

Her
first recording was produced with members of the Munich Philharmonic. Her most
recent were produced by Vienna Modern Masters and the Austrian label Gramola,
which brought out her solo CD „Bridges to Beyond“ – a recording of precious
less-known impressionist piano works which present the sensitive artist as a
specialist for beautiful, rich, soulful sound quality. Her two duo CDs
„Profiles“ and „Tales from Vienna“,
played with her piano partner Waltraud Wulz
have also received rave reviews.

She
and Elisabeth Aigner-Monarth are the co-authors of the best-sellers "Piano
Fitness" and "Piano Fitness with Etudes" brought out by Universal Edition, „TWOgether“
brought out by Breitkopf und Haertel - all of which have brought fresh wind
into the traditional pedagogical literature scene and which have already become „classics“ in
modern teaching literature. With her piano partner Waltraud Wulz, Antoinette
Van Zabner was Coca-Cola Artist in
residence at Emory
University in 2007. Antoinette
Van Zabner is a member of the Austrian Fulbright Commission and president of
the Yale Club of Austria.

She
was recently awarded the Ian Mininberg Award - the highest award of distinction
for alumni of the Yale School of Music.