Pianist Dr. Alison d’Amato (she/they) has been working in vocal and instrumental genres for more than twenty-five years as a collaborative pianist, teacher, and music director. Known as a trailblazer in the field of art song, she directs her passion for song’s rich history towards generating new music and merging its past with its present. In all her activities, Dr. d’Amato is dedicated to energizing relationships in music and bringing student’s love for their art to the forefront of their projects.

Dr. d’Amato has long explored projects that promote interdisciplinary collaborations and new approaches to the performer-audience relationship. In 2003, she became Artistic Co-Director of Florestan Recital Project, one of the earliest organizations to champion art song performances, recordings, and mentoring. Program Co-Director, (art) Song Lab [link: www.artsonglab.com], a unique collaborative intensive which brings together writers, composers, and performers to create new art songs. (Art) Song Lab has premiered nearly 100 new songs, many of which appear in publications such as New Music Shelf’s Anthology for New Music volumes, including their most recent publication of songs by trans and nonbinary Voices.

Dr. d’Amato’s breadth of artistic experience has made her a valued partner in creative projects and an effective leader in several organizations. After several years on faculty at University at Buffalo, Dr. d’Amato was promoted to serve as Director of Music Theatre in order to lead the program into new practices of equity, diversity, and inclusion. In 2017, she joined ArtsBridge as Co-Creator & Faculty for the Artsbridge Summer Art Song program, a college audition preparatory program for high school students that includes courses in song repertoire, poetry, performance masterclasses, and vocal coaching.

Dr. d’Amato has presented recitals that include dance, theatre, and multi-media collaborations. Beginning in 2016, she devised performance projects that feature student collaborations in semi-staged song works, including Robert Schumann’s Myrthen and the Heine Liederzyklus by Holocaust victim Marcel Tyberg. These programs have been sought after as a model for her guest residencies, most recently at Concordia University and Dickinson College.

Dr. d’Amato has been a frequent guest artist at festivals and schools such as the Brancaleoni Festival (Italy), the SOURCE Song Festival (Minneapolis), The AmBul Festival (Sofia, Bulgaria), Boston Conservatory, Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and SUNY Fredonia. She received the Grace B. Jackson Prize from Tanglewood Music Center in 2002 acknowledging her ‘extraordinary commitment of talent and energy.’ Dr. d’Amato attended Oberlin College and Conservatory, and earned a double Master of Music degree in solo and collaborative piano from Cleveland Institute of Music. In May 2007, she received a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from New England Conservatory of Music.