Dr. Alessandra Feris, piano instructor at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College’s Jackson County Campus, performed a solo recital at the campus Fine Arts Auditorium on March 14. It was the fourth recital on her 2013 tour schedule that includes solo recitals and master classes in various places around the United States and in Greece, Brazil and Argentina. Her recitals in the 2013 tour include works by Soler, Beethoven, Brahms, Marisa Rezende and Chiquinha Gonzaga.
“I was especially excited about this performance because it is at the Jackson County Campus,” she says. “Although I perform around the world, the place I most enjoy playing is at MGCCC, my home.”
Feris did her undergraduate work in her native Brazil at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. After that, she was awarded a fellowship from KAAD to study at the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt in Weimar, Germany. In Weimar she concluded Künstlerisches Fortbildung-Aufbaustudium in Piano Performance and Künstlerisches Diplom in Piano, Chamber Music and Lied Accompanying, under the orientation of Thomas Steinhöfel and Lazar Berman.
She came to the United States as a student and teaching assistant of Rene Lecuona at the University of Iowa in 2001. While there, she received a master’s degree in piano performance. In 2008, under the direction of Carolyn Bridger and Read Gainsford, she received a doctorate in piano performance at Florida State University. She has received top prizes in competitions at national and international levels, as well as prestigious scholarships and awards from several institutions.
Recently, she has been a guest artist and teacher at The University of Southern Mississippi, James Madison University, Auburn University, Southern University, Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City and Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. She was awarded the Mississippi Humanities Teacher Award in 2012, presenting “La Pasión of Latin-American Women Composers Chiquinha Gonzaga and Teresa Carreño,” a piano lecture recital, as her humanities presentation.