Bio

Natalie Landowski, D.M.A., joined the piano faculty at Western Illinois University in 2019, where she currently serves as the keyboard area coordinator, piano instructor, and MTNA faculty advisor. She holds the B.M. (University of California, Irvine), M.M. (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) and D.M.A. (University of Iowa) degrees, and her primary teachers include Ksenia Nosikova, Alan Huckleberry, Reid Alexander, William Heiles and Lorna Griffitt.
Landowski started her teaching career at the age of sixteen and is well versed with teaching piano at all levels in both group and private settings. She was awarded the Graduate Teaching Certificate from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign’s Center of Teaching Excellence, and was cited on the institution’s list of Teachers Ranked as Excellent (2011–12). Prior to Western Illinois University, she served on the piano faculty at Grand View University (Des Moines, IA), the University of Iowa’s Pre-College Piano Conservatory (Iowa City, IA), and the Nancy Cree Keyboard Learning Centers (Coralville, IA). She also coordinated Grand View University’s very first piano youth camp in 2019, and has been teaching at the Illinois Summer Youth Music, and University of Iowa’s Piano Youth festivals.

An active performer, Landowski has presented solo and chamber ensemble performances for WIU’s Faculty concerts, the University of Iowa’s Piano Sundays and Steinway Extravaganza series, and at the Coralville Center for the Performing Arts, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, the Upper Bay Philharmonic Society, and Irvine City Hall, as well as other venues. She has attended music festivals throughout the U.S. and Europe, and played in master classes given by notable artists such as Gary Graffman, Menahem Pressler, Eduardo Delgado, Kenneth Drake and Edward Parmentier. She is currently collaborating and touring with musicologist Marian Wilson Kimber, author of The Elocutionists: Women, Music, and the Spoken Word (Univ. of Illinois Press, 2017), reviving the lost art form of musical readings.

Since 2016, Landowski has been involved in projects that include presenting pedagogy workshops and giving master classes at universities throughout southern California, Illinois, and Wisconsin. She has also been invited to give her lecture recital at several regional conferences for the College Music Society, as well as the University of Wisconsin-Platteville’s 2018 Baroque Festival and at the 2019 Minnesota Music Teachers Association convention.