Mathilde Handelsman ’20 (Doctor of Music Arts in Performance) was recently appointed assistant professor of piano performance at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, after serving as a visiting faculty member since July 2024. She will teach piano, coach chamber music, lead music seminars and conduct creative and artistic research. Prior to this appointment, Dr. Handelsman taught at the University of New Hampshire and in the Young Pianists Program at Indiana University. She is a co-founder and co-artistic director of the St. Andrews Chamber Music Festival in New Brunswick, Canada.

Recognized as an imaginative and striking performer with refined interpretations, as well as for her “calm technical mastery, immediate understanding of balance,” and “extraordinary vigor, flawless musicality,” (Dernieres Nouvelles d’Alsace, 2013), Handelsman is a concert pianist, poet and educator from Paris, France. Her career has led her to perform a wide range of repertoire across Europe and North America as a soloist and collaborator, under conductors such as Seiji Ozawa, Thomas Adès, Stefan Asbury and Luigi Gaggero. Highlights from recent and current seasons include chamber collaborations with Yo-Yo Ma, Joseph Swensen, Samuel Magill, Stephen Drury and Nicolas Namoradze, multiple fellowships at the Tanglewood Music Center, as well as a solo performance at Carnegie Hall in 2022. Her début solo album, “Images,” featuring Claude Debussy’s complete works of 1903 to 1907, was released for Sheva in 2020. Additionally, Handelsman’s work as a poet includes two published volumes, “Pré-sage” (2015) and “L’Absurde Génie des fleurs” (2017).

Handelsman was born in Paris to a family of musicians. Her principal teachers were Menahem Pressler; Shenandoah Conservatory Distinguished Artist-in-Residence, Harrison Endowed Chair in Piano, Chair of Keyboard Division and Professor of Piano John O’Conor, Mus.D.; and Laurent Cabasso. She also received guidance and mentorship from Emanuel Ax, Garrick Ohlsson, Peter Serkin, Robert Levin, Jeffrey Kahane, Philippe Cassard and Jean-Yves Thibaudet. After graduating magna cum laude from the Académie Supérieure de Musique de Strasbourg in 2015, Handelsman moved to the United States to further her studies at the Jacobs School of Music of Indiana University-Bloomington.