Anna Kiefer is a music educator in San Antonio, Texas, USA. She received her Master of Music degree in Piano Pedagogy and Performance from the University of Texas at San Antonio, studying with Elizabeth Gutierrez, and her Bachelor of Music degree in Music Performance (Piano) from Trinity University in San Antonio, studying piano with Carolyn True and composition with Timothy Kramer. She regularly gives presentations on various pedagogical topics at local, state, national, and international meetings and conferences.
She has won several awards and scholarships, most notably the Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship, which allowed her to study music pedagogy in a Kontaktstudium program for one year at the Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst Stuttgart in Stuttgart, Germany, studying with renowned pedagogue Uli Molsen. Ms. Kiefer attended seminars and researched German methods, techniques, and philosophies of piano pedagogy. She also assisted in undergraduate student-teacher pedagogic training. Furthermore, she served as a cultural ambassador, representing Rotary District 5840 by giving presentations on American life and culture to ESL classes and Rotary clubs.
She is the founder and teacher of the Anna Kiefer Piano Studio, an independent music studio in its seventeenth year, where she teaches piano, music theory, improvisation, and composition to children and adults. Her students have won awards at local, state, and international competitions. Ms. Kiefer is also an adjunct faculty member at Northeast Lakeview College in San Antonio, where she teaches class piano, applied piano, and music appreciation. She enjoys composition, and her piece “Leonardo and Janet” was performed by the San Antonio Symphony in 2000.
Ms. Kiefer is fond of developing and directing special programs for students that enhance their musical experiences. Examples of past student programs include: a festival of works by and interaction with a living composer, a multi-piano ensemble concert and fundraiser that benefited the USO’s Injured Soldiers’ Fund and Children’s Shelter of San Antonio, a course of study that explored the relationship between visual art and music, and a project that focused on improvisation.
Ms. Kiefer is involved with many music organizations. She was the Arts Awareness and Advocacy Chair (2010-2013) and the Digital Keyboard Orchestra Chair (2012-2015) for the Texas Music Teachers Association (TMTA, tmta.org), and served as TMTA’s representative to the Texas Coalition for Quality Arts Education (goarts.org). She was the Vice Chairman of Education (2010-2015) and a board member of the Chamber Orchestra of San Antonio (chamberorchestrasa.org).
Ms. Kiefer’s memberships include Americans for the Arts, the Music Teachers National Association, the Texas Music Teachers Association, the San Antonio Music Teachers Association, the National Federation of Music Clubs, the Crownridge Music Club, and Rotary International. She is the past president of the Mission Trail Rotary Club (2013-2014) and currently serves as their Rotary Foundation Chair. The Rotary Foundation of Rotary International has named her as a Paul Harris Fellow, “in appreciation of tangible and significant assistance given for the furtherance of better understanding and friendly relations among peoples of the world.”