Voice/Piano Trio

Profile

The Voice/Piano Trio is Stephanie Meyers, Robert Frankenberry, and Jeremy Siskind.

Stephanie Meyers

Stephanie Meyers is a composer, singer-songwriter, pianist, and teacher. Initially self taught, Meyers studied at Berklee College of Music with Dr. Jonathan Bailey Holland and the late Tibor Pusztai before receiving her MFA in Music Composition from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2016. In the same year, her first string quartet received a merit award by the Tribeca New Music Young Composer’s Competition as well as the TURNMusic Collegiate Composition Prize. Meyers’ work has been performed by a wide variety of musicians, including members of the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra, Bang on a Can All-Stars, and the Miró quartet. Currently, Meyers is finishing a chamber rock record with Brian Viglione of the Dresden Dolls and composing music for Ember—a musical theater adaptation of the acclaimed young adult novel The City of Ember with playwright and lyricist Dylan Zwickel. Meyers also works as a teaching artist with Urban Voices Project, an organization offering free music education and wellness labs to folks marginalized by homelessness, mental health issues, and unemployment in the greater Los Angeles Area. Meyers’ work as a performer, composer, and teacher focuses on transmuting experienced trauma into evocative and empowering musical expressions. She’s known for delivering nuanced theatrics, compelling stories, and unapologetic vulnerability.

Robert Frankenberry

Robert Frankenberry enjoys a multi-faceted relationship with music as a singer, pianist, conductor, orchestrator, director, and even occasionally as a composer. On stage, he has performed a wide range of roles including Mozart (Amadeus), John Adams (1776), Bacchus (Ariadne auf Naxos), the title roles in Don Carlo, The Tales of Hoffmann, Faust, and Willy Wonka, and Orson Welles in Daron Hagen’s filmopera Orson Rehearsed. At the piano, he regularly performs works by living composers with such groups as Pittsburgh’s IonSound and AnimeBOP; New York City’s The Phoenix Players and PRISM Players; and multi-city entelechron and Chrysalis Duo. He has served on the coaching/accompanying staff at Seton Hill, Duquesne, Carnegie Mellon, and Point Park; the voice faculty at Mercyhurst and Point Park; and the Theatre Arts faculty at the University of Pittsburgh, where he provided vocal direction for Pitt Stages’ productions of Nine, Peter & The Starcatcher, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream; musical direction for Hair and Little Shop of Horrors; and direction for The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and Parade. He served as visiting Music Director for the opera program at the University of North Texas during the ’18/’19 and 19/’20 academic seasons, during which time he conducted productions of The Cunning Little Vixen, Don Giovanni, Regina, Gianni Schicchi, and Le Testament de la Tante Caroline as well as developing the script and creating the musical arrangements for If I Loved You, the first ever officially sanctioned original dramatic revue using songs of Rodgers and Hammerstein.

Robert was significantly involved with Pittsburgh Festival Opera from 2000–2021 in various capacities, including Artistic Administrator, Music Director, and Director of the Hans and Leslie Fleischner Young Artist Program. His contributions in creative development, orchestration, and musical direction during that time included: The Tales of Hoffmann – Retold; Carmen (black box adaptation with his own folk band orchestration); Orpheus & Eurydice (both Gluck and Gordon); Shining Brow (Fallingwater version); reduced orchestration for Die Schweigsame Frau; Night Caps (also contributing as a composer);  Night Caps International; Roger Zahab’s Happy Hour; Gilda Lyons’ A New Kind of Fallout; Dwayne Fulton’s A Gathering of Sons; the world-premiere live-performance adaptations of Mr. Rogers’ Operas; OWOW (Opera Without Walls); a film adaptation of Pauline Viardot’s Cendrillon (including full programming of his own orchestration); and a complete on-location film of Mark Adamo’s Lysistrata. Other recent projects include the role of Verdi in the remote project Verdi by Vegetables for Resonance Works | Pittsburgh; an 18 player orchestration of L’Enfant et les sortilèges for Carnegie Mellon Opera; streaming performance for Music on the Edge of David Del Tredici’s MONSTERS, Part II: Scylla and Charybdis for narrating pianist; and premieres of works by Aaron Wyanski and David Mahler with violinist Roger Zahab. This spring, he will sing the role of Cory in Daron Hagen’s filmopera 9/10, and in July the role of Thaddeus von Brakel in the premiere of Julia Werntz’s The Strange Child with Kamratōn and Quince Ensemble.

Robert is currently Interim Concert and Communications Coordinator for the Department of Music at the University of Pittsburgh. He can be heard singing and playing on the Naxos, Albany, New World Records, Roven Records, New Dynamic Records, and Innova labels, as well as various streaming platforms.

Jeremy Siskind

Pianist-composer Jeremy Siskind is “a genuine visionary” (Indianapolis Star) who “seems to defy all boundaries” (JazzInk) with music “rich in texture and nuance” (Downbeat). A top finisher in several national and international jazz piano competitions, Siskind is a two-time laureate of the American Pianists Association and the winner of the Nottingham International Jazz Piano Competition. Since making his professional debut juxtaposing Debussy’s Etudes with jazz standards at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall, Siskind has established himself as one of the nation’s most innovative and virtuosic modern pianists.

Siskind’s multifaceted career often finds him combining musical styles and breaking aesthetic norms. As the leader of “The Housewarming Project,” Siskind has not only created “a shining example of chamber jazz” (Downbeat) whose albums often land on critics’ “best of the year” lists. He’s also established himself as a pioneer of the in-home concert movement by presenting well over 100 in-home concerts in 26 states. In 2020, the Housewarming Project was a winner of a $30,000 grant from Chamber Music America’s New Jazz Works program (supported by the Doris Duke Foundation).

On a recent duo album, Impressions of Debussy, Siskind explores Debussy’s Preludes through improvisation with saxophonist Andrew Rathbun. Similarly, his 2019 book-CD project, Perpetual Motion Etudes for Piano, blurs the line between classical, through-composed, piano etudes and jazz-based improvisations and invites other pianists to do the same through a beautifully self-published work that includes “Optional Improvisation Instructions” for each piece. Siskind has been experimenting with performing the pieces in collaboration with classical pianists, including Grammy-winner Angelin Chang, and through university residencies. Other projects include writing concert arrangements for rising star soprano Julia Bullock, composing the theme song for the 2017 Obie Awards, and serving as musical director for noted comediennes Lea DeLaria and Sandra Bernhard.

A highly-respected educator, Siskind has written 13 publications with Hal Leonard, including the landmark instructional books Jazz Band Pianist and First Lessons in Piano Improv. His self-published instructional book, Playing Solo Jazz Piano, which includes an introduction from jazz piano legend Fred Hersch, is generally one of the top 50 best-selling jazz books on Amazon.com. He currently teaches at California’s Fullerton College, chairs the National Conference for Keyboard Pedagogy’s “Creativity Track,” and spreads peace through music in places like Lebanon, Tunisia, and Thailand with the nonprofit organization Jazz Education Abroad. Jeremy Siskind is a Yamaha artist.