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Associate Professor of Piano Lian Tan receives 2023 MTNA American Music Teacher Article of the Year Award

Siok Lian Tan headshot

Associate Professor of Piano Siok Lian Tan received the 2023 MTNA American Music Teacher Article of the Year Award for her article titled “Listening With Your Brain: An Aural-Cognitive Approach to Teaching Musical Understanding and Artistry.”

The American Music Teacher (AMT) is the official journal of Music Teachers National Association (MTNA), with over 17,000 readers from the United States and around the globe. Tan’s peer-reviewed article was selected by the Editorial Committee from among the feature AMT articles published during the last publication year. She will be recognized at the 2023 MTNA National Conference in Reno, Nevada in March 2023.  

The article is co-authored with Chan Kiat Lim, Professor of Piano of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and appeared in the October/November 2022 issue of the AMT. The article results from research of how musicians process and understand sound. It advocates expanding our perspective to view and teach music listening as a mental process beyond the physiological act of hearing. The article offers a comprehensive approach to listening that engages the brain and interconnects all senses in music-making to enhance musical understanding and interpretations.  

Tan ArticleTan holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Piano from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. She has appeared as a soloist with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and presented concerts in major cities such as New York, Chicago, Luxembourg, Cologne, Cape Town, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Melbourne, and London, including a solo recital at the St. Martin-in-the-Fields concert series. She can be heard on the Naxos recording, James Lentini: Chamber Music. An active pedagogue, Tan has presented lectures at prestigious music conferences such as the College Music Society National Conference, the National Group Piano and Piano Pedagogy Forum, the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy, and the Music Teachers National Association National Conference. She has also written articles for the Piano Pedagogy Forum, the American Music Teacher, and Clavier Companion. In 2011, the Ohio Music Teachers Association selected her as the OhioMTA Teacher of the Year. She is also the recipient of the 2020 Miami University Crossan Hays Curry Distinguish Educator Award.

To learn more, visit mtna.org.