Rika Uchida is a assistant professor of piano
and theory at Drake University. She received M.A. in
Music Theory and D.M.A. in Piano Performance from the
University of Oregon, where she studied piano with
Dean Kramer and Victor Steinhardt. She has also
been coached by John Browning and Karl Ulrich
Schnabel.
Prior to her appointment to Drake University in 2005,
Uchida taught at the College of Wooster in Ohio in
2000-2001 and at the University of Oregon, where she
taught as a teaching assistant for seven years.
As a pianist, Uchida has a special love for the works
composed in the early twentieth century by Debussy,
Rachmaninoff, Ravel and Scriabin. She performed
Rachmaninoff's Third Concerto as a winner of the
Concerto Competition at the University of Oregon, for
which she received the Outstanding Performance Award
from the University. Her master's thesis, Tonal
Ambiguity in Debussy's Piano Music, traced the
evolution of Debussy's new compositional techniques;
her D.M.A. lecture-document, The New Language of
Debussy's Douze Etudes, presented the structural
analysis of selected Douze Etudes and performance
interpretation. She plans to perform complete piano works by Debussy.
Recordings:
