Hailed by the Baltimore Sun as an artist whose “achingly sweet touch at the keyboard will ... make audiences weep,” pianist and musicologist Elizabeth Morgan has received wide critical acclaim for the sensitivity and imagination of her performances. She graduated with her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in piano performance from The Juilliard School, where she studied with Robert McDonald and Yoheved Kaplinksy. Other pianists with whom she has worked include Walter Ponce, Rosalyn Tureck, Emmanuel Ax, Gary Graffman, Ursula Oppens, Claude Frank, and Joseph Kalichstein.

Praised by the New York Times as “excellent”!, Ms. Morgan has performed as soloist in many major New York venues, including Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Hall, Society Hall, the Kociusko Foundation, Gallerie Icosahedron, and the New York Library for the Performing Arts. She has given solo performances at the Mendelssohn-Saal of the Leipzig Gewandhaus, Herbst Theatre in San Francisco, and with orchestras on both coasts, including the Oakland East-Bay Symphony, the Fremont Symphony, and the UCLA Symphony, and she has performed with the Mark Morris Dance Company. Ms. Morgan has appeared at numerous festivals including Tanglewood, Amelia Island, Aspen, Bowdoin, Pianofest, Festival of the Hamptons, and Rock Hotel International Pianofest, where she gave the world premiere of VAI!, by Pulitzer Prize winning composer Paul Moravec. Her performances have been broadcast on National German Radio, WQXR New York, and KDFC San Francisco.

In 2003, Ms. Morgan appeared on National Public Television as one of five featured students in an American Master’s Emmy Award winning documentary about Juilliard, which included excerpts of her performances of The Goldberg Variations and Chopin’s Second Ballade.

Ms. Morgan frequently gives recitals of musical works tied together by a common theme or idea, in which she introduces the pieces with commentary from the keyboard. In 2007, she gave the first performance of “The Virtuous Virtuoso,” a conversational recital of works that Jane Austen studied as an amateur keyboardist. (You can read more about the program here.) She has since performed the program in several states and at venues throughout Great Britain, often playing on pianos from the early nineteenth century. This season, she gives several performances of a program of works related to travel.

Ms. Morgan's research and writing focus on music of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, particularly works for the keyboard and small ensembles. She is particularly interested in embodiment, virtuosity, music and gender, and performance studies.

A native of San Francisco, Ms. Morgan grew up studying piano with Sharon Mann. She was teaching assistant to David Dubal at The Juilliard School and radio host of Tuesday Morning Classical on WKCR, 89.9 FM, New York, for two years. Ms. Morgan graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2009 with a PhD in historical musicology and a DMA in piano performance. She lives in San Francisco.