Jessica Madow
Teaches at Meadowood: Thursdays beginning June 2019
Jessica loves all things keyboard. She holds advanced performance degrees in
piano and harpsichord from USC and the University of Michigan, and spent several
summers at the Oberlin Conservatory Baroque Performance Institute delving deeper into
the details of baroque performance. Jessica has performed with orchestras, in solo recitals,
in chamber music concerts, in festivals, and as solo and choral accompanist around the
country. She has also served as organist and music director at churches in California,
Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
She greatly enjoys branching out, and has played squeezebox in klezmer bands, bell
trees and iphones with choirs, and organ with bagpipers. She became entranced
with the beauty of the hammered dulcimer's sound the very first time she heard it
at a Renaissance Fair in Southern California. Since then, she's become a highly skilled and creative hammered dulcimer player who has been featured locally with
the Lehigh University Dolce Ensemble and the Princeton Singers in a piece by Stephen Sametz for hammered dulcimer and choir.
Jessica has performed on hammered dulcimer in concerts Irish festivals, with a horse quadrille dancing around her, in art galleries, restaurants, mountaintop and riverside weddings, and with Donna Lang, another Meadowood teacher, in their duo, Miradow. Jessica loves that the hammered dulcimer (unlike grand piano and harpsichord) is an easily transportable instrument!
Jessica was a past PA Rural Arts Alliance Grant recipient for her project, “Bach to Blues:
Harpsichord to Synthesizer,” which presented workshops and hands-on opportunities for
the community to experience historical and alternative keyboard instruments as well as
explore techniques, sounds and styles of ethnic and world music.
Sharing her fondness of music with her students is important to Jessica, and she strives to see each student progress and find joy in their own musical journey. She teaches children
and adults, from beginner through advanced, in all styles of music on keyboard and hammered dulcimer. Her lessons include practical keyboard theory and technique as foundational.
We are so pleased to have Jessica as one of the wonderful teachers at Meadowood.