Sue Medford is founder of PianoArts, a national piano competition and music festival that was formed in 1995 with a collaboration of Milwaukee musicians and educators.
A large portion of Ms. Medford’s career was spent with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, where she was the Director of Education and Education Concert Manager for over 23 years. Many of the education programs she developed became national models, reaching over one million Wisconsin children and preparing thousands more to become educators and music professionals.
Prior to her MSO position, Ms. Medford was the Director of Audience Development for the Florentine Opera and the National Representative for Summy-Birchard Music Publishing Company. In the latter position, she organized, promoted, lectured and performed for teachers at college seminars and in workshops from coast to coast.
Ms. Medford was also on the faculty of the New School for Music Study in Princeton, New Jersey, where she taught in both the preparatory and professional departments. She is a graduate of Western Carolina College, a campus of the University of North Carolina, and the professional program of the New School for Music Study, founded by Frances Clark and
Louise Goss.
Among Ms. Medford’s honors was her election as a Trustee and Director of Public Relations for the Frances Clark Center for Keyboard Pedagogy, from 1999 to 2003. In 2005 Ms. Medford received Milwaukee’s Civic Music Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award. She is also on the piano faculty at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music.
