Pianist Dr. Alison d’Amato is passionately engaged as performer and teacher in the full spectrum of collaborative music genres, particularly skilled in song and text-based projects. She is Artistic Co-Director of Florestan Recital Project, Assistant Professor of Vocal Coaching at Eastman School of Music, and Lecturer in Voice at University at Buffalo. In all these activities, Alison is dedicated to energizing the relationships and communication in music and bringing students’ love for music to the forefront of their work.
Alison has developed several projects that explore interdisciplinary collaborations and new
approaches to the performer-audience relationship. She is Program Co-Director of Art Song Lab
(www.artsonglab.com ), an intensive that presents new songs in collaboration with composers, poets, and performers. Since 2003, her work with Florestan Recital Project has engaged audiences and artists in a broad spectrum of art song collaborations through performances, recordings, and mentoring. In 2017, she joined the faculty of ArtsBridge’s ArtSong summer intensive, which prepares rising high school seniors for college/conservatory. In 2020, Alison began touring a unique mentoring residency project, using Robert Schumann’s Myrthen as an intensive German Lied ensemble project for undergraduates.
In addition to traditional masterclasses in collaborative repertoire, Alison has shared classes with colleagues in Humanities, musicology, poetry, composition, and performance disciplines. Recent recording projects include The Complete Songs of Virgil Thomson (New World Records), David Liptak’s Dove Songs with soprano Tony Arnold (New Focus Recordings), and Music for Violin and Piano by Joseph Achron with violinist Michael Ludwig (Naxos).