Louise Thomas, D.M.A.

Pianist Louise Thomas is Director of Keyboard Collaborative Arts at Chapman University. She received her doctorate in piano performance from the University of Southern California where she studied with John Perry and Alan Smith.

A native of Ireland, Louise Thomas has concertized extensively throughout Europe, North America and Asia at such notable concert venues as the Tchaikovsky Conservatoire in Moscow, the Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing and Carnegie Hall in New York City.

After completing undergraduate musicology studies at Trinity College, Dublin where she had developed a passion for music of the 20th century, Louise was offered a German Government scholarship (DAAD) to study piano performance at the Hochschule in Hannover, Germany. While a student there, she won second prize at the Ibla-Ragusa competition in Sicily where she was also awarded the Bela Bartók Prize. Subsequently in 1998, she won the concerto competition at the University of Southern California and played under the baton of the late Sergiu Comissiona.

This recording is currently available on K-USC’s “Kids and Parents” CD.

A highly active collaborative pianist, Dr. Thomas has made CD recordings in Germany (as part of the chamber music festival, “Schwetzinger Festspielen”), at the Banff Center for the Arts in Canada with the Irish Contemporary Music group, Nua Nós, as well as appearing on numerous radio broadcasts for Irish Radio, BBC Radio Northern Ireland, Moscow radio, K-USC and K-MZT in Los Angeles. She has also played live and recorded many times for RTE (Irish National Television) and the nationally distributed Ovation Arts Channel in Los Angeles. Her recordings are available at iTunes.com

Louise Thomas has been invited onto the faculty of several summer programs.

She has been the vocal coach at “La Fabbrica” in Tuscany and since 2003 has been the Festival pianist and vocal coach at the summer program of Idyllwild Arts Academy in California.

In 2007, she performed a program of “California Composers Today” at Carnegie Hall, continuing her commitment to the music of today.