About Madeline Bruser

Pianist Madeline Bruser has performed as soloist with the San Francisco and Denver Symphony Orchestras. She has conducted seminars and workshops at the Juilliard School, the Manhattan School of Music, the University of Southern California, the Music Academy of the West, the MedArt World Congress on Arts and Medicine, and college music departments and music teachers' organizations throughout the United States and Canada. She also appeared on National Public Radio’s “Performance Today” in an interview and piano lesson broadcast in 200 cities.

Ms. Bruser is the author of the highly acclaimed book, The Art of Practicing: A Guide to Making Music from the Heart, which combines musical, meditative, and physiological principles. Her book was published in Korean in 2000 and in Chinese in 2005. She has retrained pianists with practice-related injuries since 1985, and from 2001 to 2003 she served on the Committee for Pianists’ Wellness for the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy. Her research on the physiological mechanics of piano playing has included interviews with leading arts medicine professionals specializing in physiatrics, physical therapy, and hand therapy, as well as with teachers of the Alexander Technique, Body-Mind Centering, and Laban Movement Analysis.

Ms. Bruser won First Prize in the Denver Symphony North American Young Artists Competition and was a prizewinner in the First National Chopin Competition. She also received the Alfred Hertz Award for Music from the University of California in two consecutive years. She has appeared in recital at Carnegie Recital Hall and at the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C., and has performed on radio in the U.S. and Europe. She studied with Alexander Libermann, Menahem Pressler, Irwin Freundlich, John Crown, Jeanne Stark-Iochmans, and Paul Hersh. Ms. Bruser graduated from the Juilliard School in 1970 and received a Master of Music degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in 1978.

An authorized meditation instructor, Ms. Bruser leads the annual Meditation for Musicians retreat in Vermont—a weeklong program integrating meditation practice with music workshops applying principles of body mechanics, meditative listening, and relaxation.

Ms. Bruser teaches piano privately in New York City, where she has served on the Adjunct Piano Faculty at Teachers College, Columbia University.