Hannah Mae Swanson (b. 1997) grew up in Darwin and later Deerwood, Minnesota, and takes an inordinate amount of pride in her home state. Hannah is passionate about connecting with people through music, which is what drew her to collaborative piano. Hannah has played collaborative repertoire in masterclasses for Yevgeny Sudbin, Rebecca Wilt, Chiharu Iinuma, Dr. Sally O’Reilly, Stephen Sulich, and others. In June 2017, she performed Brahms’s Piano Quartet in C Minor, No. 3, Op. 60 at the North Dakota State University (NDSU) Chamber Music Festival with Margot Schwartz, David Harding, and Bill Comita. She has also performed as a collaborative pianist at the North American Saxophone Alliance Regional Conference, at Le Domaine Forget de Charlevoix, at the NDSU Baroque Festival, at Minnesota NATS, at CMEA, and at numerous recitals and festivals at NDSU, at the University of Minnesota, at Bemidji State University (BSU), and in Colorado.

 

Hannah also has extensive experience performing solo piano repertoire. In February 2019, she performed a recital including solo works by Ligeti, Scriabin, Copland, and Mendelssohn at NDSU. She has also given solo performances and played in solo masterclasses in Brainerd, MN through the Lakes Area Music Festival, at BSU, and in the Fargo-Moorhead area. Classical piano aside, Hannah has performed as a jazz pianist for jazz combos and ensembles at BSU and in Fargo. Notably, Hannah played for Victor Wooten with the Blue Ice Jazz Combo at the JEN Conference in Louisville in 2016.

 

Hannah started taking piano lessons at age five, but she didn’t start seriously studying classical piano until she was in middle school. In high school, she studied with Susan Kavanaugh of Central Lakes College and with Dr. Edward Turley of the College of St. Benedict/St. John’s University. She then studied with Dr. Stephen Carlson at BSU from 2015-2016 before transferring to NDSU. Hannah graduated with a bachelor's degree in Piano Performance in May 2019 from NDSU after studying with Dr. Tyler Wottrich. She was the recipient of the 2017 Presser Scholarship, as selected by the unanimous vote of the NDSU music faculty. Hannah is now pursuing a master's degree in Collaborative Piano at the University of Northern Colorado under the tutelage of Dr. Edward Rothmel.

 

Hannah is currently based in northern Colorado where she is the choral accompanist at Fossil Ridge High School. Hannah splits her time between her adventures in the realm of music and spending quality time with her cat, Cosmos.