| Born in Buffalo, New York, Anita
King earned degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory and the University
of Iowa where she completed her Doctor of Musical Arts in Performance
and Pedagogy in 1981. A winner of several piano competitions,
King has appeared as piano soloist with the Omaha Symphony,
the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, the Pueblo Symphony, the Oberlin
Orchestra, the University of Iowa Orchestra, and the Salem Chamber
Orchestra. She was pianist for the Iowa Center for New Music
and was piano soloist in the Berg Chamber Concerto. King performs
regularly as soloist and chamber musician and has collaborated
with such artists as cellist Fred Sherry, clarinetist David
Shifrin, the Ridge String Quartet, sopranos Barbara Pearson,
Susan Narucki, Nancy Zylstra, and Kym Amps, pianist Charles
Wadsworth, and the Zephyros Wind Quintet. King was a member
of Trio Northwest (piano, violin, cello) in residence at Willamette
University from 1986-1997. In 1989 Trio Northwest toured South
America as winners of the U.S. Information Agency "Artistic
Ambassador" auditions. The Trio performed 23 concerts and
presented master classes in 5 countries.
Since joining the faculty of Willamette University in 1981,
King has taught piano, accompanying, chamber music, advanced
music analysis courses, and, more recently, the Alexander
Technique. She has also participated in interdisciplinary
teaching that reflects her interest in the relationships between
the arts. In 1989 King won the prestigious Graves Award which
sent her to England to pursue an intensive study of Shakespeare.
In 1993 and 1995 King presented a series of public lectures
on Schubert's song cycles, Die Schone Mullerin and Winterreise
in which she explored the relationship of poetry to music.
She performed both cycles with baritone, Julio Viamonte.
Since 1997, King has been immersed in the field of kinesthetic
re-education as it relates to musicians' health. King began
studying with Barbara Conable in the spring of 1998 and became
a certified Andover Educator in the fall of 2000. She has
been a certified teaching member of Alexander Technique International
since 2003 and for 15 years has been integrating the work
of Dorothy Taubman which provides movement re-education for
pianists. King has created a college course for musicians
(offered every semester at Willamette University) in which
she teaches Body Mapping and the Alexander Technique. She
has been a frequent presenter of workshops for musicians throughout
the northwest. Her most recently developed presentation, "Understanding
Music's Multiple Levels: Creating the Foundation for Interpretation
and Movement" intimately connects her research into musicians'
movement with her Schenkarian approach to music analysis.
She gave this presentation, as well as two performances, at
the Two-Piano
Institute of the Ernest Bloch Festival in June, 2004.
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