Department of Music

Biography

Shelby Sender received her Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Piano Performance at the University of Maryland in 2013. She is active as both a solo and collaborative pianist. She has performed at both the Hungarian Embassy in Washington, D.C., and the Hungarian Ambassador's Residence. A faculty member of Crescendo, a classical music festival located in Tokaj, Hungary each summer, she is also a co-founder and the accompanist for Mosaic Children's Choir in Charlottesville. In March 2012, she performed in Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall as a part of the Adamant School of Music's 70th Anniversary Concert. Shelby was featured in a 2011 festival at Ithaca College commemorating the 200th anniversary of Franz Liszt's birth, and she recently gave world premieres of works by Walter Gieseking at the American Musicological Society's 2009 annual conference. She frequently works with the Charlottesville Opera as well as Victory Hall Opera and has appeared on multiple occasions with the Annapolis Chamber Players. She can be heard on a Centaur recording of unpublished works by Walter Gieseking, playing both solo and chamber music.

In 2018, Dr. Sender was sent by the Sister Cities Commission to Pleven Bulgaria to represent Charlottesville in concert. She studied during the 2010/2011 academic year under Kálmán Dráfi at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest. She gave performances in Bartók Hall at the Institute for Musicology and the Régi Zeneakadémia at the Franz Liszt Memorial House and Museum in Hungary, as well as the Haus der Kulturen der Welt and the Universität der Kunste in Berlin.

Shelby received her Master of Music degree from the University of Maryland and her Bachelor of Music degree from Ithaca College. She is the co-founder for Mosaic Children's Choir, a group that incorporates movement, drama, dance, and performs in non-traditional spaces. She was the coordinator for the class piano program at the University of Maryland, where she also taught class piano and gave private lessons to piano minors. She currently maintains a private studio in Central Virginia and works as the choral and orchestral pianist at St. Anne's-Belfield in Charlottesville. Recent teachers include Bradford Gowen, Read Gainsford, and Jennifer Hayghe.