Lisa Auten is an active pianist, teacher, and music director who has performed with the University of Arkansas Music Department, the UArk Schola Cantorum; TheatreSquared; Arkansas Public Theatre; Bentonville High School Choral Department; Fayetteville High School Choral Department; the Symphony of Northwest Arkansas (SoNA), and the SoNA Singers. Throughout her career, she has performed in Los Angeles, Orlando, New York (Carnegie Hall: 2007 and 2023), Belgium, Russia, and Thailand. She has accompanied numerous performances at All-Region, All-State, Southwestern Division of American Choral Directors Association (SWACDA), and national American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) concerts. Additionally, she served as Collaborative Pianist Chairperson for the SWACDA Regional Convention in 2020, and again at the SWACDA conference in Denver in 2024.
She is an active member of both ACDA and the National Association for Music Education. Peer-reviewed academic journal Choral Journal June/July 2023 (Vol. 62, No. 9) writes, “Pianist Lisa Auten expertly handles this idiom, finding just the right weight and touch to make the keyboard seem windswept in accordance with the lyrics” in its review of Wander-Thirst: The Choral Music of Florence Price (Hill Records 2023:25:40) As a musical theatre director/conductor, she has led close to 60 musical productions, in high school, college, community, and Equity theatres.
Auten joined the faculty of John Brown University in 2022 as an Assistant Professor of Music. She brings her passion for music education, piano performance, and musical theatre to her students. She enjoys teaching Applied Piano, Orchestration, and the Keyboard Musicianship cycle, as well as music directing and conducting JBUMT’s Musical Theatre productions. Auten holds both a Master of Music in collaborative piano and a Bachelor of Science in music education from the University of Arkansas
