Omri D. Shimron Faculty Profile

Omri Shimron is Associate Professor of Music at Cal State, East Bay where he is Piano Area Coordinator. He teaches applied piano, group piano, piano ensemble, as well as courses in musicianship. His most recent solo recital at Old First Concerts in San Francisco (2019) included works by Bach, Schubert, Glass, and Wiesenberg. His debut solo album, featuring Frederic Rzewski's iconic 36 Variations on "The People United Will Never Be Defeated!” was released in July 2014 on New Focus Records.

Omri is currently District 2 Director for the California Association of Professional Music Teachers (CAPMT), as well as Communications Chair (and former Co-President) of its San Francisco/East Bay Chapter. He frequently adjudicates in local and regional festivals sponsored by MTAC, the US Open Music Competition, and others. A former member of the Music Teachers Association of California (MTAC), Shimron was one of three adjudicators for the 2020 Panel auditions.

A seasoned piano pedagogue, he was on faculty at the Rebecca Penneys Piano Festival from 2013-2017 where he taught an international group of students from elite music schools worldwide. Prior to CSUEB, he taught at Elon University (NC), Hillsdale College (MI), and Eastern Mediterranean University (Cyprus). In his piano teaching, Shimron embraces a holistic approach to music that integrates expression and physical awareness with an historically informed approach to style and sound.

Dr. Shimron holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Performance and Literature (Piano), a Master of Music (Piano) and a Master of Arts in Music Theory Pedagogy from the Eastman School of Music. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Music (Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude) from the University of Rochester. In addition to his academic credentials he also trained at the Chautauqua Institution, the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, the Banff Center for the Arts, and the Jerusalem Music Center.

Born in the United States but raised in Israel, he appeared at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and the Tel Aviv Museum. In the US, he won prizes from the Hoffman Competition and the Chautauqua Institution. Collaborative and solo concerts also included appearances at the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage, and live radio broadcasts for WBFO, WXXI, and WUSF stations. Dr. Shimron is frequent guest artist and clinician at universities across the U.S. and abroad.

Outside the U.S., Shimron has participated in the Felicia Blumental Festival (Tel Aviv) and has presented recitals at Wolfson College (Oxford, UK) and the Bursa State Conservatory (Turkey). In 2008, he performed ‘anisotropie’, a work for prepared piano by Michael Quell, at SoundsCAPE—a contemporary music festival in Italy.

As a musician in academe, Dr. Shimron presented multiple lectures and lecture-recital for the College Music Society (CMS), where he also briefly served as President-Elect of the Mid-Atlantic Chapter. His work as a performer-scholar focused on traditional and contemporary piano music by Liszt, Stravinsky, Larsen, Chen Yi, Crumb, Dietz, and Rzewski. Shimron also pursued several projects in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) as it relates to flipped-classroom methodologies (in foundational music theory courses) and faculty-student partnerships on course design.