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Stephen Mulvahill, piano
Pianist Stephen Mulvahill, a native of Houston, is a concert artist, educator, and scholar whose boundless curiosity and intellectual versatility have led him into a wide variety of repertoires and performance and research projects. Mulvahill is Visiting Assistant Professor of Piano at Wartburg College, where he directs the Piano Area and oversees piano recruitment and outreach. He is in demand as a piano soloist, chamber musician, collaborative pianist, conference presenter, and adjudicator. Mulvahill is in the final stages of completing the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Piano Performance and Pedagogy at the University of Iowa, where his research centers on expanding the musical diversity of standard piano pedagogy.
As a piano soloist, Mulvahill has won top prizes in the Rosen-Schaffel Concerto Competition and University of Iowa Concerto Competition. He has performed at Lincoln Center in New York City and at music festivals around the United States and in Europe, as a recipient of performance and research awards from UNCSA's Chrysalis Chamber Music Institute and the University of Iowa. In 2023, Mulvahill gave a complete performance of Charles Ives's monumental and rarely-performed Concord Sonata at the University of Iowa. In 2017, he collaborated with composer Dr. Michael Rothkopf to create the official premiere recording of Rothkopf's Chaconne for Piano and Computer at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.
This season, Mulvahill's engagements include a tour of the Midwest performing Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue with the Wartburg College Wind Ensemble. He will also give a solo piano recital tour of eastern and central Iowa, and he recently gave performances of an under-performed set of solo piano pieces by Clara Schumann in a concert series co-sponsored by the University of Iowa and Orchestra Iowa. In the summer of 2025, Mulvahill gave a presentation at the Iowa Music Teachers Association state conference, sharing his pedagogical research on the piano music of American jazz pianist and composer Valerie Capers.
At Wartburg College, Mulvahill teaches Applied Piano, Piano Seminar, Class Piano, the final semester of Aural Skills, and a humanities seminar titled Listening to Music in a Diverse World. He also assists with Opera Workshop as rehearsal pianist and coach and collaborates with faculty and students on recitals. Previously, at St. Ambrose University, Mulvahill taught Applied Piano and the undergraduate Music History sequence, and at Kirkwood Community College he served on the piano and theory/aural skills faculty, in addition to working as a faculty collaborative pianist.
Stephen is certified in the Suzuki method and taught piano and conducted orchestras for six years at the internationally-recognized Preucil School of Music in Iowa City. He is an experienced musical theater and opera pianist/coach, has completed a doctoral secondary area of study in Orchestral Conducting, and currently serves as orchestral pianist for the Ottumwa Symphony Orchestra.
Stephen is married to clarinetist and educator Ana Maria Locke and has a six-year-old daughter, Anastasia Sophia. When he's not teaching or practicing, Stephen enjoys being out in nature, cappuccinos, reading, and playing with his daughter.