Mary Anna Salo began her piano studies at the age of five with her mother, Diane Salo, an accomplished pianist and veteran teacher of keyboard and music theory. Mary Anna began teaching and accompanying at thirteen. As an accompanist, Miss Salo has worked with adult choirs, vocalists, string and woodwind players. When she was fourteen, Mary Anna enrolled, along with her mother, in N. Jane Tan’s three-year teacher training program, the Well Prepared Pianist Institute. The course began in September 2001 and concluded in 2005, taking almost four years due to an expansion of the first year to two years. She was the youngest teacher/student ever to take the class. At seventeen, Mary Anna began studies with Judit Jaimes, head of the piano area at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. In 2008, she enrolled as a piano performance major at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she continued her studies with Jaimes during her freshman and sophomore years. At the start of her junior year, Mary Anna transferred studios to the studio of Elena Abend, with whom she completed her under-graduate studies in the spring of 2012. After she completed her undergrad, Ms. Salo spent a year-and-a-half furthering her training in pedagogy, specifically in the Well Prepared Pianist, under the instruction of Barbara Bunge and Sue Rusch at their studio in Hales Corners, Partners in Music. This study included private lessons, observing lessons and teaching lessons. In addition to studying pedagogy, Mary Anna continued her own piano studies under Annie Sherter and Dr. Paul Sánchez. Currently, Mary Anna is the music director at Calvary Lutheran Church in Brookfield, WI, as well as a private teacher and free-lance accompanist. This fall, she will begin pursuing her Master’s degree in piano performance with a minor in arts administration at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.

In 2006, Miss Salo was a semi-finalist in the international PianoArts competition held bi-annually in Milwaukee, WI. She, as a student-teacher, presented the key-note recital at the Well Prepared Pianist Institute’s international festival in the summer of 2008. Other performances include Steinway Gallery of Milwaukee’s Steinway and Sandwich program, student recitals, both solo and collaborative, at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and a shared-program on Music and More, a summer music series hosted by First Presbyterian Church in Racine, WI. In 2011, Mary Anna was selected as an alternate for the 2011 Mimir Chamber Music Festival held annually at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, TX. The following year, she had the privilege of being selected for the 2012 MCMF and attended the festival as one of the young artists. In the summer of 2011, she was accepted into the inaugural young artist program of the Dakota Sky International Piano Festival held annually in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. While there, she played in masterclasses with Douglas Humphreys, Jeffrey LaDeur and the Delphi Trio, Petronel Malan and Alessio Bax. She performed in both of the young artist recitals. Mary Anna returned to Dakota Sky in 2012 as both a young artist and an intern, and again in 2013 as a volunteer. Her most recent accomplishment is the launching of Winterpast Recital Series in January of this year. Winterpast is a recital series dedicated to giving up-and-coming young artists a performance and publicity opportunity in Southeast, Wisconsin. For more information on the series, please visit www.winterpastseries.com.