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Degrees:
BFA, Oberlin Conservatory
M.M., Michigan State University
DMA, CUNY Graduate Center
Sylvia Kahan is Professor of Music at the City University of New York's Graduate Center and College of Staten Island. She teaches music history, music theory, piano, chamber music, and keyboard musicianship. In her teaching, she foregrounds the interconnections of the historical and cultural forces that shape music composition, music analysis, and performance practice. Many of her courses include the teaching of skills that enable students to write about music more clearly and confidently.
Originally trained as a concert pianist, Sylvia Kahan earned a Bachelor's degree at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and a Master's degree in Piano Performance at Michigan State University, and continued her studies in New York City with renowned pianist Richard Goode. She has enjoyed a career as concerto soloist, recitalist, and collaborative pianist, performing in all of New York City's major concert halls and throughout North America and Europe. The New York Times described Sylvia Kahn's Merkin Hall recital as a "stimulating mix of piano music," and praised her "inventive, lively interpretation" and her "playful, fluid sense of ornamentation." Her recitals have been broadcast on WQXR, WNYC, and National Public Radio. As a collaborative pianist, she has partnered world-class artists such as sopranos Roberta Peters and Shirley Verrett and members of the English Chamber Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago and San Francisco Symphonies, and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.
In 1993, Sylvia Kahan earned a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the City University of New York's Graduate Center, where she won the Barry S. Brook Award for Outstanding Dissertation. Her interest in French music and culture in the 19th and 20th centuries has resulted in numerous publications, articles in the journals Nineteenth Century Music (2005), Three Oranges (2004), and the Bulletin Marcel Proust (2003) and the anthologies Nadia Boulanger et Lili Boulanger, témoignages et études (Lyon: Symétrie, 2007), Edgard Varèse: Composer, Sound Sculptor, Visionary (Boydell Press, 2006) and Regarding Fauré (Gordon and Breach, 1999). A sought-after speaker, Dr. Kahan has given lectures in prestigious venues including New York City Opera. Her book, Music's Modern Muse: A Life of Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac (University of Rochester Press, 2003, 2nd reprint 2006) has been hailed as an "important new biography"; it will be published in 2009 in French translation as Une Muse de la musique moderne (Les Presses du Réel). A second book for University of Rochester Press, In Search of New Scales: Edmond de Polignac's Octatonic Invention, is forthcoming.
At CSI, Dr. Kahan is former Chair of the Department of Performing and Creative Arts. She is the outgoing President of the Greater New York Chapter of the American Musicological Society.