Alicia Kopfstein, Ph.D.
Music is my life. I love all styles, all time periods, all countries, Beatles and Beyoncé, Bach and Binchois. My experiences and training have helped me become a master teacher, a classical guitarist, classical singer, folk/rock/pop singer, ukulele player, award-winning scholar/musicologist, and published author! This broad range of experience provides me with an unusually varied perspective that enriches every lesson.
Teacher
Alicia was the head of the classical guitar department at Northern Virginia Community College for 20 years, and now teaches all styles of guitar, music theory, music history, music appreciation, and ear training/sight singing at American University as well as musicianship and music theory for the Washington National Opera Summer Institute. She also maintains an active home studio. Her reputation as a teacher with both her colleagues and students is wonderful. Alicia is a compassionate problem-solver—she has documented learning disabilities that she has successfully overcome as seen by her Ph.D., award-winning publications, and excellent student evaluations.
As a gifted communicator, Alicia loves helping people enjoy and fulfill themselves through music. Choose your path, then she will help you achieve your goals with the music you love while learning the best techniques possible.
Scholar and Author
Alicia’s articles have appeared in Guitar Review, Soundboard, Classical Guitar, and the American String Teachers Association Journal. Her book Leonard Bernstein and His Young People’s Concerts studies the social, cultural, and political aspects of Bernstein’s ground-breaking award-winning TV programs. The Wall Street Journal praised it as "a bristlingly well-informed monograph that draws on Bernstein’s archives to tell the story of how his Young People’s Concerts telecast came to be, and why they have had no true successors." She is an editor of and an author for a new collection of essays entitled Leonard Bernstein and Washington, DC: Works, Politics and Performances published by the University of Rochester Press.
She was recently interviewed about Bernstein's arts education series by Public Radio International's program Studio 360 with Kurt Anderson. Her studies of ergonomics led her to interview the director of the National Arts Medicine Center and write The Healthy Guitar, a booklet describing how ergonomics can help a player select a guitar. This booklet is so useful it is quoted in physical therapy journals and books and appears on guitar syllabi. Alicia has presented for the American Musicological Society (AMS) the National Opera Association, and the Cosmos Club, and has received awards from AMS, Mu Phi Epsilon, and the Cosmos Club Foundation.
Education, Professional Commitments, & Memberships
Alicia has a Ph.D. from the Catholic University of America with a major in music history and a double minor in music theory and classical guitar. Her award-winning dissertation was “Leonard Bernstein’s “Young People’s Concerts:” Contexts and Canons.” She also has an M.A. in music history with a minor in voice from American University. Her award-winning thesis was “The Duets from the Jane Pickering Lute Book.” Her B.M. is also from American University.
Alicia is currently an associate professor on the adjunct faculty at American University, has been on the faculties of Georgetown University, George Washington University, and Mount Vernon College. She was the Director of Classical Guitar at Northern Virginia Community College for twenty years and taught musicianship classes for Westmoreland Congregational Church for twenty years. She is now enjoying playing from James Hill’s site The Ukulele Way.
She is a member of the American Guild of Musical Artists (AGMA), the Society for American Music, and the American Musicological Society, the Lute Society of America, the American String Teachers Association, Mensa, Mu Phi Epsilon (international professional music fraternity), and the Ukulele Way.
Performer
Alicia is an experienced instrumentalist and singer, but she has retired from performing except for occasional musical contributions to church services.
In addition to singing in the Bernstein Mass, she has performed on both guitar and voice in solo recitals as well as a variety of classical music productions from liturgical dramas, Renaissance consort concerts, oratorios, operas, and chamber music performances at such halls as the Kennedy Center, the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, the Metropolitan Opera, as well as throughout the Washington, D.C., area in various churches and synagogues. Her postmodern eclectic background is reflected in her experience as a founding member of the early music group, the Heywood Consort, and as a performer of rock, pop, and folk in clubs from Bonaire, N.A. to Ft. Lauderdale to D.C.