Kathleen Pierson

Kathleen Pierson, Baltimore 2001
This photo: Baltimore, 2001

Short 50-word bio for program notes, etc:

Kathleen Pierson (BA Music, MM Composition) has been devoted to teaching and performing music all her life, enjoying long-running affiliations with Goucher College and Towson University in Maryland, as both teaching faculty and dance musician. Since 2001, she has been teaching and playing for dance in Ohio, at Denison University and Kenyon College.

You can find details about my professional life as teacher (click here) and as musician (click here) on other pages: this page is just a bit about my more personal life history, for fun...

I was born and raised in Maryland, and spent my undergraduate years at Goucher College, where I majored in music and first began playing for dance classes, and was also on the Equestrian Team. By the time I graduated from Goucher, I was regionally well-established as a singer-songwriter, and was very much enjoying constant gigging at colleges and coffeehouses. After my daughter was born, I was less involved in travel and singing, but I continued playing for dance at Goucher, and teaching riding. For a while, I was managing the YMCA riding program at Black Rock in northern Maryland - 28 horses, 250 acres, group lessons, six teenage "student teachers" helping out...

In 1980, we bought a little patch of land in the Arkansas Ozarks, which was quite a change of context, and I pursued graduate studies in electronic music and choregraphy while continuing to play for dance at University of Arkansas. I created Performing Arts Collective while in Arkansas, among other things.

After returning to Maryland, I finally finished my Master's degree, and began teaching at Towson University, while continuing to play for dance classes. When my daughter began college, I resumed some horse-related activity, and ended up as live-in caretaker on a goat farm for three years! What an interesting life: chores before dawn, teaching college courses and playing for dance classes all day, chores at night!

In "the new millenium," I have taken a moment to revisit Arkansas, and a moment to revisit my favorite mountain in North Carolina. Now I am living in Ohio, and my activities here are well-documented on this website's other pages.

A Few Photos:

Kathleen Pierson, streetsinging

I sang many truly "classy" gigs -
Sunfest in Oklahoma,
the opening of Pearlstone Center at Goucher College,
the opening of The Glass Pavilion at Johns Hopkins University,
Phil Arnoult's Theatre Project many a time,
Patches 15 Below many a time,
the enchanted Sleeping Lady Cafe in California,
etcetera, but I still always loved "streetsinging."
Baltimore was never much of a city for that, but
I was an official permit-holding streetsinger at
Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco...
(this photo c. 1970)

1980,
Lake Wedington Music Festival
in Arkansas

 Kathleen Pierson, Lake Wedington Festival
Kathleen Pierson, singing at Bauhouse

Bauhouse, 1990.

Bauhouse was
an unusual venue
in downtown Baltimore.
In August 1990, I shared a gig there
with composer Elaine Erickson,
and the spectacularly open-eared audience
enjoyed everything from Elaine's
darkly serious art songs and flute solos
to my chamber music, electronic things, and
some of my singer-songwriter works.
Roger Brunyate
(head of Opera at Peabody Conservatory)
was in the audience and
approached me afterward about
expanding (4,027 k mp3) "I Took That Risk"
(the song I'm singing in this photo)
into a little opera of some kind!
Not exactly what I wanted to be doing
at the time, but it shows you
what an adventure Bauhouse could be...

Towson, 1993

 Kathleen Pierson, guitar and trees
Kathleen Pierson, at the goat farm

(left) At the goat farm in northern Maryland, 1997, and (right) along the very lovely and magical North Central Railroad Bike Trail which runs through the back of the goat farm acreage, 1999

 Kathleen Pierson, along the bike trail

The handsome beauty of a few of "my" goats. This goat farm was one of the most inherently "musical" places I have ever been in my life - even the quality of light, or the ripples on the surface of the pond, seemed to sing, somehow.

 goats
Kathleen Pierson, treeshadow at Black Hand Gorge

Central Ohio's historic Black Hand Gorge trail has a "side trail" called Chestnut Trail which circles this lovely south-facing hillside, a compelling destination every season of the year, with the stark white of the sycamores along the river bottom down below, just out of view of this photo

Drumming in the Denison dance studio, 2002

 Kathleen Pierson, drumming at Denison

To return to Kathleen Pierson's Home Page, click HERE