Miriam Eley is former Master Faculty member in piano at the Westminster Conservatory of Music in Princeton, New Jersey. Recently retired from this 35-year appointment, as well as her position on the Westminster Choir College piano faculty, she now focuses her time and energy on a select number of gifted students at her home studio in Ewing, New Jersey. Her formal education is from Indiana University (MM with distinction, piano performance), Baylor University (BM, piano performance), Peabody Conservatory of Music, and Interlochen Arts Academy (Diploma). Mrs. Eley received further training in piano pedagogy from Louise Goss and Frances Clark at The New School for Music Study in Kingston, NJ. She later taught at the New School and served as Coordinator of the Preparatory Division.
Among her scholarly contributions to music pedagogy, Miriam Eley wrote the curricular workbook, Sketches and Imagery at the Piano: An Approach to Composing Through Improvisation. She has presented multiple workshops entitled Improvisation and Composition: Unleash Your Creative Possibilities in Teaching. She has taught private piano, group piano, and composition at many summer piano camps. She contributed the article, "How and When to Teach Phrasing," to Keyboard Companion/Winter 2001, focusing on the need for students to sing and listen to the shape of a phrase as they first learn to play the piano.
Miriam Eley began composing and studying piano at age three. Her self-published piano duets, African Vignettes and French Sweets, in addition to two solo collections, Childhood Daydreams, Books I and II, have been taught and performed throughout the country. Her piano teachers are James Tocco, Roger Keyes, Jo Boatwright, Fernando Laires, Drusilla Huffmaster, and her mother, Anita Hopson Henderson. Besides her extensive teaching at Westminster, she taught at Brewton-Parker College, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary School of Church Music, and Indiana University (Assoc. Instructor). Miriam Eley has performed throughout the United States as piano soloist and collaborative pianist, and has adjudicated numerous local, state, and regional piano auditions, competitions, and festivals in California, Georgia, Texas, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania.
