Elizabeth Manduca

Elizabeth Manduca is the owner of Manduca Music Publications and Manduca Music Studios in Portland, Maine. She received a BS in Music Education from the University of Maine; graduate piano pedagogy study at Westminster Choir College and Laval University in Quebec; and she received a Master of Arts in Music History and Performance Practice from the University of New Hampshire. She won a fellowship at UNH to study and catalogue twentieth-century piano literature. Her teachers were Kathryn Ann Foley, William Harms (Manhattanville College), Johanna Harris, Richard Roberts, and Ruth S. Edwards. She taught class piano in the Cape Elizabeth school system, music history and applied lessons at Westbrook College/University of New England, piano and composition at Manduca Music Studios, and class piano at the University of Southern Maine.

Liz has been a guest clinician in the areas of music history, piano pedagogy, performance practice, music and movement, composition for numerous conventions, festivals, summer camps, and colleges including MTNA, MENC, Longy School in Boston, Wheaton College, Dartmouth, University of Maryland, Plymouth State College, University of Maine and New Hampshire. She is a frequent adjudicator for festivals and competitions. She has written articles and reviewed new music for Clavier Magazine, The Piano Quarterly, American Music Teacher Magazine and Keyboard Companion.

Her students have won numerous prizes including chamber music, solo piano, jazz piano, concerto competitions and composition competitions including the BMI prize.

As a performer, Liz has appeared as a soloist, chamber music player, symphony orchestra member, and choral accompanist. She has premiered numerous new solo and ensemble works for piano, and has given lecture recitals on new music.

She is a nationally certified member of Music Teachers National Association and has served as a state president, Eastern Division President, Baldwin Piano Competition Chair, Certification Chairman, and she has contributed to numerous MTNA publications on Zoning, Studio Management, Marketing, and Communications. She represented MTNA in a series of lectures on Independent Studio Teaching. She is also a member of BMI and ASCAP.

In 1994, she began The Piano Teachers Press and soon bought up other publication companies specializing in brass music, combining all of these into Manduca Music Publications. She is the co-author of Successful Studio Teaching and the author of Necessary Theory and Harmonization for the Piano Student; the composer and/or arranger of numerous piano ensemble works. She edited the Piano Curriculum Guide and its accompanying materials by Dr. Tinka Knopf de Esteban.

She lives in Portland, Maine with her husband Mark Manduca. They have two daughters, Maria and Diana. Her non-musical pursuits include writing poetry, long-distance swimming and gardening. She is a travel writer for The Vacation Rental Travel Guide.