Magdalena Baczewska

Polish-born pianist and harpsichordist Magdalena Baczewska [ba-CHEV-ska] enjoys a versatile career as an international concert artist, educator, and speaker. Baczewska is director of the Music Performance Program at Columbia University, where she is full-time faculty and teaches Music Humanities and performance master classes.

Baczewska has appeared as a soloist with leading orchestras including the San Francisco Symphony, China National Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Vancouver Symphony. She has collaborated extensively with the Oscar and Grammy Award-winning composer Tan Dun; playing his piano concerti and having recently recorded a DVD of his chamber music. She is frequently invited to give keynote speeches and master classes at conservatories and universities worldwide; most notably Beijing’s Central Conservatory, the International Keyboard Institute and Festival, New York University, and the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts.

Baczewska holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Mannes College The New School for Music, and a doctorate from the Manhattan School of Music. She is the Artistic Director of the Kosciuszko Foundation Chopin Piano Competition in New York City. Ms Baczewska has created best selling albums for the BlueSleep Medical team researching and treating sleep disorders. She is a Yamaha artist.

Makulumy Alexander-Hills

Makulumy Alexander-Hills is a theatrical music director, arranger, and pianist based in New York, NY. It has been his pleasure to collaborate with theatrical professionals from around the country, having worked recently at The Rose Theater, TheatreWorks, and the American Repertory Theater. He has experience in vocal coaching, music preparation (Finale), demo production (Logic), improvisation, orchestration, vocal arranging, masterclass accompanying, tap/jazz dance class accompaniment, and piano instruction. A collaborator of Rhizome Theater Company, Makulumy is currently pursuing graduate studies in Music Theory at Columbia University.

Anya Wilkening

Anya Wilkening is a PhD student in Historical Musicology at Columbia University, where she is the recipient of the Baier Endowed Fellowship. Ms. Wilkening holds both a Bachelor of Music and Master of Music from Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, where she studied with Paul Kantor.

Ms. Wilkening has performed in venues across the United States and Europe, including Carnegie Hall and the Musikverein. An avid chamber musician, Ms. Wilkening attended the Center for Advanced Quartet Study at the Aspen Music Festival and School, where she was awarded the Neuman Family Foundation Scholarship. She has performed at the prestigious Robert Mann String Quartet Seminar hosted by the Manhattan School of Music and appeared as a Young Artist in Residence at the Strings Music Festival. Ms. Wilkening was named as a Da Camera Young Artist in September of 2017, and performed throughout Houston as both a soloist and chamber musician. Ms. Wilkening performs on a 1761 Florentine violin made by Lorenzo and Tomaso Carcassi.

At Columbia, Ms. Wilkening teaches “Masterpieces of Western Music” in the Core Curriculum. She has previously developed outreach programs for the Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado and the Strings Music Festival. As a Da Camera Young Artist, Ms. Wilkening also served as a principal teaching artist in local schools, bringing music into the classroom in context of students’ concurrent academic pursuits.

Ms. Wilkening’s research interests include medieval vernacular and pious song, musical borrowing, and gender in music. In 2015, she was awarded the First Prize for Undergraduate students in the Fondren Library Research Awards in recognition of her research on the Magdalenian identity in fifteenth century German Passion plays. More recently, she presented her work on Marian contrafacta at Rutgers University. Her interest in public musicology led to her involvement with Houston Public Media, where she served as the Arts & Culture assistant from 2016-2018.