Kristin Ditlow

Pianist, conductor, and coach Kristin Ditlow is enjoying a performance and teaching career throughout the United States and abroad. She has appeared in concert throughout North America, mainland China, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Austria, and the Czech Republic.

Her solo debut piano CD, Passages, has received national accolades. Harry Musselwhite of the Rome News-Tribune wrote that “the recording … is sonically breathtaking and her playing ranges from intimate pianistic thoughts to thundering room-shaking outbursts. She is a consummate interpreter.” In a review by musicologist Ralph Locke, Boston’s The Arts Fuse remarks, “I have played this album repeatedly for weeks … [the performances] are deeply affectionate: I sometimes felt I could hear Ditlow thinking about the (silent) words, noticing a surprising modulation, or responding to the tension-and-release within a musical phrase.”

Travel, wonder and exploration are greatly important to this artist – and her playing reflects it. Critics have hailed her performances as “fiery, with great thrusts of energy” (Bethlehem Morning Call), and containing a “burnished color and sense of passion” (The Philadelphia Inquirer). Her foundational training has been as a classical pianist. Yet, she has branched out into conducting, artist teaching, arranging, improvising and composing. Her love of musical collaborations dovetails into her solo performances, and her virtuoso technique and musicianship inform her presence at the keyboard and on the podium.

Ditlow holds degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Westminster Choir College, and a Doctorate of Musical Arts from the Eastman School of Music, with further training at the Tanglewood Music Center, San Francisco Opera Center (Merola), and the Franz Schubert Institut. She holds the titles of Associate Professor of Vocal Coaching at the University of New Mexico and Music Director of the University of New Mexico Opera Theatre.