Ana María Otamendi

Janice & Gerald Pellar Associate Professor of Collaborative Piano

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Biography

Since her orchestral debut at age twelve, Venezuelan pianist Ana María Otamendi has performed as a soloist, collaborative pianist, and conductor with renowned orchestras and at important venues such as Chicago Symphony Hall, Spivey Hall, Teatro Teresa Carreño (Caracas, Venezuela), Salzburg Domesaal, Megaron Mousikis Concert Hall (Athens), Parco de la Musica (Rome), Teatro Arcimboldi (Milano), Teatro Odeum (Patras), as well as many other venues in Austria, Panama, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, United States, Spain, Italy, and Greece. Over 300 collaborative performances with renowned artists such as Donald Sinta, Michelle DeYoung, Paul Groves, Ana María Martinez, Alexis Cárdenas, members of the Chicago Lyric Opera Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Houston Grand Opera Orchestra, Pittsburgh Orchestra, Dallas Symphony, Dallas Opera Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony, and many more.

After finishing her two-year tenure as Studio Artist at the prestigious Houston Grand Opera Studio, as well as the Merola Opera Program of the San Francisco Opera, she became the Head Vocal Coach of the Moores Opera Center at the University of Houston. Currently, she is the Janice Harvey Pellar Associate Professor of Collaborative Piano at Louisiana State University and Coordinator of the collaborative piano program. She is the Co-Artistic Director of the Collaborative Piano Institute, an intensive three-week summer program devoted to collaborative pianists, that counts with stellar faculty, such as Martin Katz, Rita Sloan, Warren Jones, Kathleen Kelly, Marie-France Lefebvre, Howard Watkins, and many more.

She is also pianist and founding member of the Reverón Piano Trio (a Venezuelan ensemble devoted to the standard, modern, and Latin American piano trio repertoire managed in the United States by Meluk Kulturmanagement and in Latin America and Europe in society Halac Artists - Meluk Kulturmanagement), and the Aelia Duo (with pianist Elena Lacheva).

She is a regular guest artist, guest speaker, and teacher at different Universities in the United States and abroad such as the University of Michigan, Yale, Cambridge, Universidade de Sao Paulo and Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (Brazil), Mahidol University (Thailand), University of Minnesota, University of Texas at Austin, the University of South Carolina, and many more. Ana María holds a Master’s degree in piano performance from the University of Wisconsin, an Artist Certificate from the University of South Carolina where she worked with the renowned pianist Marina Lomazov, and a Doctorate in Collaborative Piano from the University of Michigan, where she studied with world-class collaborative pianist Martin Katz. In 2021 she won the Emerging Artist Award from the University of Michigan, as an artist who has greatly contributed to the profession, as well as the Rising Faculty Research Award from Louisiana State University for professional excellence.

She was principal keyboard of the Venezuelan Symphony Orchestra (2007–08) as well as Assistant Professor at the University of Musical Studies in Caracas. Besides her musical training, Ana María is fluent in English, Spanish, French, and Italian, and also a Geophysical Engineer. Her thesis was published in the prestigious journal Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors.