| Sophia Ahmad |
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Sophia Ahmad, a Philadelphia native, received her graduate training in piano performance at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y. Her Bachelor of Music in piano performance is from Gordon College in Wenham, Mass., with additional chamber music studies at New England Conservatory in Boston, Mass. She has appeared in master classes and coachings with Libby Larsen, Malcolm Bilson, Martin Canin, Ursula Oppens and James Buswell. Ms. Ahmad recorded for Prentice Hall's "Inside the Orchestra" video and has collaborated with artists from the New World Symphony and the National Portuguese Symphony Orchestra, among others. An advocate of new music, she premieres pieces and has worked with composers including Bright Sheng and Simone Fontanelli. In 2012, she made solo appearances at Iowa State University and Drake University, performing the music of Philip Glass. Ms. Ahmad is a Presser scholar and active as a music teacher, performer, critic and writer. At the Eastman School of Music, she taught piano class and co-founded the annual Women in Music Festival. Ms. Ahmad was the classical album critic for the Democrat & Chronicle in Rochester, N.Y., and for four years, she covered entertainment for The Des Moines Register, where she became the media company's first digital reporter. She was ranked by The Bivings Group for having the third highest Twitter IQ among American newspaper journalists. Ms. Ahmad received several awards for breaking news, innovative digital reporting and extensive coverage of central Iowa’s growing entertainment scene, while establishing herself as an active media personality. In 2010, she became a fellow at the 2010 National Endowment for the Arts' Arts Journalism Institute in Classical Music and Opera at Columbia University. She is currently the director of marketing and public relations at the Des Moines Symphony Orchestra and Academy, where she also serves on the piano and chamber music faculty. Ms. Ahmad oversees earned revenue for the Des Moines Symphony and under her leadership, the organization recently reported its highest subscription sales in recent history. Interact with her on Twitter at @SophiaAhmad.
How/when did you get started in music? I started playing piano because my older sister started taking lessons, and I wanted to be just like her!
What is your favorite memory teaching at the Academy? Teaching kids how to read music. Even if students forget how a piece sounds, if they can read music, they can play for a lifetime.
Aside from symphonic/classical music what type of music do you enjoy? My favorite composers/musicians are Beethoven and U2. In graduate school, I wrote a paper on how their styles are strikingly similar (sound color, driving bass rhythms, octave displacement, etc.). It was so wacky that the professor of that class, music critic and composer Greg Sandow, still refers to the paper in his Eastman and Juilliard courses!
What other hobbies or interests do you have? I enjoy writing and serve as the online entertainment reporter at The Des Moines Register. I also like the ocean, traveling and playing chamber music with friends and colleagues. |