Tanya Blaich

1969 -

Tanya Blaich, a member of the collaborative piano and voice department at the New England Conservatory of Music, has enjoyed remarkable success in a teaching and performing career that now spans more than two decades. She has performed as a soloist, accompanist, and member of chamber ensembles in distinguished venues throughout Europe and in the United States. Additionally, she is proficient in French and German and has worked extensively as a coach in voice studios both in the U.S. and abroad.

Tanya was born in Walla Walla, Washington, the only daughter of Roland and Edith Kroll Blaich. From her earliest years her interest in music and the humanities was encouraged by her father, a professor in and also chair of the history department at Walla Walla College, now University, and her mother, a nurse, both of whom had been born in Germany and were deeply interested in the fine arts.

She started piano lessons at age eight and then studied with Debra Bakland Richter at Walla Walla College for twelve years. During her study with Richter, she was a winner of numerous festivals and competitions, including those sponsored by the Idaho-Washington and Walla Walla symphony orchestras in 1985, when she soloed with the IWSO at age fifteen. She was also a soloist in a Concerto Gala Concert presented at the Washington State Music Teachers convention in 1990.

While doing her undergraduate study at WWC, Tanya taught for three years in the piano preparatory division and was a frequent accompanist and participant in recitals. After graduating with high honors from WWC in 1992, with majors in the humanities and French and a minor in music, she traveled to Europe, where she completed with distinction a diploma in vocal accompaniment and chamber music from the Vienna Conservatory. She subsequently completed both M.Mus. and D.M.A. degrees at the New England Conservatory of Music. She was a recipient of the Hannah Adler Scholarship in Vienna and the Natica Righter Williams Endowed Scholarship at NEC.

While in Vienna, Blaich both coached and accompanied at Kammersaengerin Hilde Roessel Majdan's voice studio at Goethe Conservatory and was a vocal coach at the Performing Arts Studio in Vienna. She also played extensively in recital halls in Austria, Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece, Poland, and France. She has performed in Alice Tully Hall and Jordon Hall at NEC and in the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada, and has been heard on Austrian National Radio and WGBH and the WCRB Radio Performance Series in Boston.

During her time at NEC, Blaich served as director of the Undergraduate Opera Studio from 2006 to 2009 and is now a soloist and collaborative artist, accompanist and participant in chamber music, teacher of diction and repertoire, and a vocal coach. She is a frequent recitalist and has given master classes at Dickinson, Dartmouth, and Atlantic Union colleges and at Columbia University and the Idyllwild Arts Academy in Southern California.

A sought-after accompanist, Blaich has worked with a number of distinguished artists, including Sari Gruber and Klemens Geyerhofer. She accompanied baritone Geyerhofer when they won the top prize in the 2000 Robert Schumann Competition in Germany.

ds/2012

Sources: Walla Walla University music department records and Opus newsletters, summer 1992, 18, and summer 1998, 5; Biography at the New England Conservatory of Music website (2009); personaI knowledge.