Pianist Derek Hartman ~ The Arts at Messiah 2026

American pianist Derek Hartman shot onto the international classical piano scene after becoming the first American-born musician to win first prize at the prestigious 17th International Beethoven Piano Competition in Vienna in the event’s sixty-year history. He has established an international career as an award-winning performer, a dedicated educator, and an enthusiastic advocate for music. He has performed on stages across the United States and Europe, including the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. and the Golden Hall of the Musikverein in Vienna. He won top prizes in the Washington International Piano Competition, the Chicago International Music Competition, the PianoArts North American Competition, and the Music Teachers’ National Association Young Artist Piano Competition.

A fierce advocate for the close relationship between the performance and pedagogy disciplines, Mr. Hartman is a devoted music educator with over fifteen years of studio teaching experience. Since 2024, he has served as Lecturer of Piano at the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University. He is an alumnus of the Post-Graduate Fellowship Program at the New School for Music Study in Kingston, New Jersey, where he taught piano from 2023 to 2024, and he is an active member of the Frances Clark Center for Keyboard Pedagogy. Hartman is equally at home as an instructor in classroom and group environments. He was a teaching assistant of music theory at the Yale School of Music from 2020 to 2023. Since 2018, he has partnered with PianoArts of Wisconsin to design and present dozens of music educational programs across the city of Milwaukee.

Hartman is currently a Doctor of Musical Arts candidate at the Yale School of Music, where he studied with Boris Slutsky. He holds a Master of Music from Yale, and he previously earned a Bachelor of Music from the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University under the tutelage of Dr. James Giles; he also received a minor in music theory. Born and raised in the Twin Cities metro area of Minnesota, he currently is based in Nashville, Tennessee.

The program for this recital will feature Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in C-sharp Major, Beethoven’s Sonata in F-sharp Major, Op. 78, Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit, and Brahms’ Sonata No. 3. No reservations are required, and there is no admission charge, but a suggested donation of $20 per person would be welcomed. For more information, please call (912) 598-1188 weekday mornings.