TIMELINE
Becoming a Pianist
Early Years
Pianist Lisa Weiss, a native of Quincy, MA, began playing by ear at age three after hearing her mother sing “McNamara’s Band” and picking out the notes on the piano handed down by her grandparents. By pure chance, when she was six she met Boston Pops pianist Leo Litwin. Her mother was holding Lisa up so she could watch the rehearsal of the New England Conservatory Orchestra through the auditorium door’s window. Mr. Litwin happened along and found a chair for Lisa to stand on. Her mother and he got to talking, and it was decided that he should be her teacher. Less than a year later, he arranged an audition for Lisa with Maestro Arthur Fiedler, the Boston Pop’s legendary conductor. At seven, she performed Haydn’s Concerto in D with orchestra under Fiedler’s baton.
Summers at Chautauqua
Lisa grew up in a non-musical family. Though they recognized that Lisa was a prodigy, her parents were determined that she live as normal a life as possible. With three older siblings, it was important that she not be given special treatment. During her pre-teen years she went on many skiing and sailing trips in the New England area in between practicing and concerts. She did not take to sailing at all, however, and at age twelve was relieved of this obligation when her mother agreed to let her spend her summers at the Chautauqua Institute. There, she immersed herself in the piano program, took lessons with Ozan Marsh, played in master classes, practiced most of the day, and enjoyed her independence from “normality.” Surrounded by all the arts, she thrived at Chautauqua, returning for three more summers, interacting with many like-minded young musicians, and winning a concerto solo spot with the Chautauqua Youth Orchestra. It was a pivotal experience.
Accepted to Harvard
When the time came, she applied only to liberal arts colleges rather than conservatories. A top all-around student in high school, she saw herself as a music major who could also devote time to reading great literature, writing papers, and growing intellectually. The split with Litwin was painful. He had hoped she would forego any form of higher education and instead spend her days practicing and entering competitions. She agonized over his disapproval when she told him she’d been accepted to Harvard. Nevertheless, they parted ways.
Harvard/Yale/Peabody Years
At Harvard she met three teachers who changed her life: pianist Russell Sherman, with whom she studied privately as an undergrad, and Harvard music professors Luise Vosgerchian and Leon Kirchner. Vosgerchian, the first female to obtain tenure at Harvard, took her under her wing and provided nurturing, mentorship and encouragement. As a member of Kirchner’s famed “Music 180,” a student chamber music seminar, she collaborated with string and wind players and singers for the first time. His support and keen guidance of her talent combined with lessons with Sherman were transformative. No longer a child prodigy, she had a musician’s mind of her own and she was on her way to a life dedicated to her art. When she arrived at Yale for her masters, she became a pianist for the Yale Contemporary Ensemble, performing chamber works by diverse experimental composers such as Earle Brown and Morton Feldman.
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Pursuing a Doctorate at the Peabody Conservatory while simultaneously pursuing (eventually achieving) tenure at Goucher College and tending to a newborn son was a major juggling act. She was fortunate to have the unwavering support and faith of her Goucher colleagues and its administration, her stellar professors at Peabody - who challenged and encouraged her at every turn (not the least of which was her piano teacher, Leon Fleisher) - and her extraordinary artist-husband. She thrived and matured immeasurably as a pianist and musician during those years. In addition to five full-length solo recitals at Peabody, she completed her final Doctoral project, “The Late Piano Style of Robert Schumann: a Lecture - Recital” (listen in media library). She also gave her New York debut at Merkin Hall, reviewed favorably in the New York Times.
Contemporary Music
Leon Kirchner’s Impact
At Harvard, Lisa was in Leon Kirchner’s student chamber music seminar (Music 180) for all four of her undergraduate years. During this time she learned her first contemporary work – Kirchner’s Piano Sonata No. 1, composed in 1948. Kirchner, a student of Arnold Schoenberg, made Schoenberg’s music relatable through the way he described its structure and how beautifully and musically he played it himself. For the next decade, studying privately with Kirchner upon graduating, Lisa dove into Schoenberg’s Opus 11, 23, 25 and 33 a/b, his Five Pieces for Piano as well as his piano concerto. She also learned works such as Stravinsky’s Serenade in A, Copland’s piano sonata and Piano Variations and more works by Kirchner, including his first piano trio and first piano concerto. A few years after graduating, she was active as a frequent performer in a group called Red Sneakers, a group of Harvard Ph.D. composition students and local composers.
Academia
During her 34 years as Professor of Music at Goucher College, she worked closely with colleague-composer Robert Hall Lewis, performing much of his solo piano music and many other new works as a regular pianist for the Baltimore Museum of Art’s new music series. Lewis also introduced her to music by contemporary Italian composers, whose solo piano works she performed often as part of Goucher’s Ars Viva series. During this period she also performed Stories from Another Planet for piano, violin and narrator – a work about journalist Daniel Pearl by L.A. composer Russell Steinberg, hailed by Musical America as one of the 30 most prominent musicians of 2024. Another highlight was Stories from the Annex by José Bowen, former president of Goucher College, for soprano and piano, based on the Diary of Anne Frank. She later performed this work in tandem with a choreographed interpretation by a modern dancer as a guest artist for the Forum Concert Series in St. Thomas, VI, which also included works by Rorem, Golijov and Art Tatum.
Recordings and Unique Projects
She has performed frequently in Italy, giving concerts along the Amalfi Coast and in Venice and environs (including the Cimarosa Europe Festival), the latter to promote her CD, Millennium Crossings, which features piano solo works by contemporary Italian composers performed by herself and the distinguished composer Curt Caccioppo. ​
She has also composed several small pieces, including a work for solo piano inspired by connections she made between her husband’s artwork and a Scarlatti sonata she was studying, as well as Four Haikus – representing the four seasons for soprano and piano, for which she wrote both the poems and the music. She has paired contemporary music with her own artworks (felt tip markers on paper) and with dance for a piano solo by Osvaldo Golijov.
​Her pursuit of new music continued with a trip to Tel Aviv. After learning a group of pieces for piano solo by members of the Israeli Women Composers Forum, they invited her to visit, play their pieces and engage in discussion about the diverse origins of female origins in that part of the world and that effect on their compositional styles. ​
Lisa continues to explore new music, performing a work for solo piano and computer composed for her by Baltimore composer Samuel Burt at Baltimore’s Artscape. Her current projects include pairing Bach’s 15 Sinfonias with Starer’s 14 Sketches in Color.