In May 2018, The Nellie Tholen Fund of The Oregon Community Foundation awarded Steinway Artist Claire Wachter a grant of $40,000 to complete the second phase of The Virtual Piano Master Course online video series.

“This brings the total Oregon Community Foundation grant support for these projects to more than $100,000,” Wachter said. “We currently have seven hours of online videos on The Virtual Piano Pedagogue website and on YouTube, with thousands of views in more than one hundred countries.”

Wachter is the featured pianist and presenter in “The Imagination of Robert Schumann,” “The Genius of Domenico Scarlatti,” and “The Art of the Phrase.” Steinway Artist Dean Kramer joins Wachter as guest pianist/presenter in “The Essence of Chopin,” a live video production filmed in Silva Hall at The Hult Center for The Performing Arts in Eugene, Oregon.

Wachter also directed and produced “The Power of Beethoven,” with Dean Kramer as pianist /presenter, and “The Secrets of Russian Piano Playing,” featuring pianist Alexander Tutunov, Professor of Music at Southern Oregon University, as presenter/performer.

The second phase of the Virtual Piano Master Course will feature several outstanding pianists from Oregon as pianists/presenters in an expanded range of topics for the 2018-2019 video series.

“Dean and I will again team up as presenter/performers in a new series of online videos titled “The Fantastic Sound-World of Claude Debussy” in honor of Claude Debussy’s centenary year (1918-2018),” Wachter said.

As a nationally and internationally recognized pianist, Wachter has performed in solo, chamber music and concerto concerts in Austria, Italy, Taiwan, Japan, Canada, Korea and China.

In the Northwest, she has performed with the Oregon Symphony, the Oregon Bach Festival, the Eugene Symphony, the Oregon Mozart Players, and the Oregon Festival of American Music.

As a collaborative artist, she has appeared in chamber music concerts with members of the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, the Oregon Symphony, and the Pittsburgh Symphony.

Wachter is Professor of Piano and Piano Pedagogy at the University of Oregon School of Music and Dance, where she teaches award-winning students.

The Virtual Piano video projects are funded through the University of Oregon Foundation as well as by The Oregon Community Foundation. Wachter has received additional support from the University of Oregon School of Music and Dance, Sage Computer Services (Seattle), The Eugene Symphony, The Hult Center for the Performing Arts, and Southern Oregon University.

Wachter’s video crew and film editor for both phases of the project are a team from Los Angeles whose credits include work for all the major television studios, including HBO.