Samantha Simpson Piano Studio
About the Teacher
Samantha Simpson
Samantha Simpson began studying piano at the age of five with a concentration in classical performance and went on to have multiple teachers until she studied under Ian Hominick starting in high school. She won Mississippi Music Teachers’ Association competitions in solo, sonata, concerto, and ensemble categories, and competed at the World Championship Old-Time Piano Festival in Oxford, Mississippi. She was also awarded the Ole Miss Women’s Council for Philanthropy’s Mary Donnelly Haskell Scholarship, Mary Courtney Anderson Piano Scholarship, Brown-Ellis Piano Scholarship, and Music Excellence Scholarship to attend the University of Mississippi to study piano at the age of eighteen.
Samantha Simpson went on to start teaching private piano lessons in 2019 and joined Oxford Music Teachers’ Association during her time in her native Mississippi. She graduated Summa Cum Laude with a BM Piano Performance degree at the University of Mississippi in August 2022 and joined Phi Kappa Phi and Pi Kappa Lambda. She was recognized as the University of Mississippi’s Outstanding Undergraduate Pianist of the Year in 2020 and 2021, respectively, and performed in piano masterclasses for Bruce Levingston, Adrienne Park, Andreas Klein, and Anthony Bonamici. She also accompanied many local churches’ congregations and choirs in the Corinth and Oxford areas of Mississippi, accompanied Lakeshore Choral Camp in Norton, Mississippi; assisted as an understudy pianist and assistant for Ole Miss’s Youth Music Theatre Workshop, and worked with Living Music Resource in collaboration with UM Department of Writing and Rhetoric and AmeriCorps Vista Project to create curriculum and instruct a 2-week elementary and middle school music education program in the North Panola School District of Mississippi. During her final year of her bachelor’s degree, she was awarded an undergraduate assistantship in Music Office Administration.
In addition to her extensive piano study, she also enjoys the choral community. She performed Alto 2 in Beethoven’s 9th symphony with the Ole Miss University Chorus and Memphis Symphony Orchestra and traveled with the UM Concert Singers to Raleigh, NC to perform Alto 2 for ACDA in the spring of 2022. One of her favorite personal moments was when she met Dolly Parton that same year!
Samantha Simpson earned a MM Piano Performance degree at Bowling Green State University in Ohio under Yevgeny Yontov, where she also was awarded a quarter-time assistantship to teach class piano. She continued choral involvement through BGSU’s University Choral Society, and actively taught group piano at Bowling Green State University. She developed her own private studio and joined MTNA. Her favorite composers to play are Chopin and Debussy, and she plans to experiment with learning jazz and teach piano lessons during her free time while also cuddling with her golden retriever, Lana, who always pauses her playtime to listen to Chopin.