Dr. Jenna Klein

Jenna Klein is assistant professor of piano at Mississippi State University where she coordinates the group piano program for the Department of Music. She teaches group piano, functional piano skills, secondary applied piano, pedagogy and teaches piano at MSU’s Community Music School. Prior to joining the music department at Mississippi State University, Dr. Klein taught applied and class piano at Southern Nazarene University in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (2018-2021).

Dr. Klein is a dedicated teacher and pedagogue who has taught students of all ages and abilities. From 2013-2016, she maintained an active private piano studio where her students regularly performed and were recipients of festival and competition awards. Since 2016, she has continued her private teaching alongside her graduate studies and subsequent collegiate teaching appointments, by teaching at the University of Northern Iowa’s Community Music School and Imagine Music and Arts in Norman, Oklahoma.

As a performer, Dr. Klein has played nationally throughout the Hudson Valley region of New York, Michigan, and the Midwest and internationally in Eisenstadt, Austria as part of the Classical Music Festival and has played in masterclasses with Vladimir Feltsman, Spencer Myers, Alvin Chow, and Alan Chow. Her primary teachers include Dr. Jane Magrath, Dr. Barbara Fast, Dr. Lynn Worcester Jones, Sean Botkin, and Dr. Ruthanne Schempf.

During her time as a doctoral student at OU, Dr. Klein was a five-time recipient of the Provost’s Certificate of Distinction in Teaching for "Outstanding Instruction as a Graduate Teaching Assistant." She has been the recipient of several scholarships and awards that have allowed her to travel and present her research. In March 2021 she was awarded “Best Student Paper” for the CMS South-Central 2021 Conference for her paper, “Pedagogical Piano Works by Diverse Composers". During the final year of her doctoral studies, she was awarded the Mergler and Bullard Dissertation Completion Fellowship that she used to complete research related to diversity and representation in the piano repertoire.

Dr. Klein is an active presenter at state, regional, and national conferences. Her current research interests include pedagogical repertoire by underrepresented composers, group piano curriculum, rote teaching, and flow theory. She has been invited to present internationally at the European Piano Teachers Association (EPTA) Conference, and nationally at the Group Piano and Piano Pedagogy Forum (GP3), MTNA Collegiate Piano Pedagogy Symposium, the MTNA National Conference, the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy (NCKP), and the CMS National Conference. Regionally she has presented at CMS Central and CMS South-Central conferences and for area music teacher associations in Iowa and Oklahoma. Her research has been published in the Music Teacher’s National Association (MTNA) e-journal. Her personal website can be found at www.jennakleinpiano.com.