Dr. Richard Shuster

Assistant Professor of Piano and Music History

Piano Coordinator

Pianist Richard Shuster is active as a soloist, collaborative artist, lecturer, and teacher. His piano performance degrees include a Bachelor of Music from Indiana University in Bloomington, IN, where he studied with Dr. Henry Upper and the late Leonard Hokanson.  He holds the Master of Music and Doctorate in Musical Arts degrees from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY.  While at Eastman, Dr. Shuster was a student of Rebecca Penneys and the recipient of a graduate fellowship award in studio and class piano teaching.  He was also the recipient of the prestigious Fulbright Full Grant for study at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest, Hungary, where he worked with Andras Kemenes.  While attending the Chautauqua Institution Summer School of Fine and Performing Arts, he was the orchestral pianist and featured performer for the Music School Festival Orchestra.

Dr. Shuster has appeared as guest artist and clinician throughout the United States and abroad.  Recent performances include solo and chamber music recitals in Texas, Oklahoma, and throughout the Eastern United States.  International appearances include Budapest, Berlin and the Caribbean. 

His highly original multi-media lecture-recital "Claude Debussy: Painter of Music" includes a performance of Debussy's Preludes and incorporates a variety of visual art, poetry and aroma.  In this historically based program, images of art masterpieces by Monet, Degas, Renoir, Van Gogh, Whistler, Parrish and O’Keeffe are carefully faded in and out with the changing colors and phrases of the music.

Before joining the faculty of Texas Woman's University, Dr. Shuster was Assistant Professor of Piano at Ithaca College in Ithaca, NY.   He has also been on the faculties of the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY, Finger Lakes Community College in Canandaigua, NY, and the Indiana University Young Pianists Program.  Dr. Shuster also teaches undergraduate music history and coordinates the class piano program at TWU.