Piano

Karen Sigers holds a Doctorate in piano performance and was a founding member of the internationally famed Bridge Ensemble. The group’s nine years of touring and festival successes included the honor of recording their world class commission, Giya Kancheli’s “Piano Quartet in l’istesso tempo” on ECM. She has performed all over the world, including Madrid, Paris, London, Holland, St. Petersburg, Taiwan, and in Alice Tully Hall, with artists such as Lynn Harrell, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, and Paula Robinson.

Critics say that she “elicits a full range of sonorities from the keyboard with a wonderfully delicate touch when necessary and a beautifully sustained legato,” (Journal American) and that she “add[s] the voice of the piano in all its moods. With finesse and fire, her music could be playful, uplifting or dark and foreboding.” (Athens Daily News) Gerard Schwarz of NY’s ‘Mostly Mozart’ states,
“Everything she touches is a success.”

Karen has been a pianist in musical theatre since the age of 12 and adds directing to her schedule when possible, as well as ongoing vocal coaching and choral music. Highly proficient at sightreading, Dr. Sigers thrives on the variety in her career, and she is experienced at teaching the differences in solo piano, chamber music, and accompanying. She is comfortable with all styles and genres of music and enjoys teaching jazz and pop tunes, as well as classical repertoire.

A native of Georgia, Karen Sigers has been taught by Ralph Votapek, Carlos Corma, and Maria Luisa Faini. She earned her doctorate in piano performance and music theory at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Karen began her study of the Alexander Technique (a method of thinking in relation to movement) in New York, moving to Lincoln, Nebraska in 1985 to concentrate her study of this important work with Marjorie Barstow (1899-1995), the first graduate of Alexander’s first teacher training class in 1931-33. Karen continues to study and practice the Alexander Technique, with Marjorie until 1990, and with Don Weed, Marjorie’s major apprentice, to the present day.

Among many other things, Karen enjoys writing. Her manuscripts include Sound into Light: Dante’s Vision of Celestial Music; and her dissertation, entitled The pianist: His manual technique, his mental technique.  

Download and listen to a recording of Debussy’s Clair de Lune

Program Notes: “Debussy evokes moonlight, the moon, as it moves through the night sky, the night clouds. The Suite itself is yet in his late romantic writing, but the delicacy of Clair de Lune is a precursor to impressionism’s brushstrokes. The ending speaks to me of the very last beam of moonlight, as it slips behind an opaque cloud, or disappears in that mysterious time between night and day.” - Karen Sigers

Ginastera Piano Sonata #2, Finale: ‘Ostinato aymara’

“The tour de force in the middle of this fascinating program was Karen Sigers’ playing of Alberto Ginastera’s Piano Sonata, no. 2. It’s a piece with dense, dissonant harmonies, clusters upon clusters of chords in the first and last movements, shimmery effects with plenty of pedal in the middle one, and at the end of both first and last, a demented onslaught on the piano. Sigers sailed through its difficulties. She performed from inside the piece, bringing out its sensuousness and its shape, and her playing was always assured, clean, and amazingly relaxed.” - Philippa Kiraly, ‘Eastsideweek’