About Madeline Bruser
Author of the acclaimed book The Art of Practicing, NYC-based pianist Madeline Bruser has taught musicians from Italy, Spain, England, Denmark, the Netherlands, Romania, Kosovo, Greece, Kenya, Israel, Australia, Korea, Japan, Canada, and the US, both in person and online. Committed to helping musicians release physical and mental tension, she includes mindfulness-awareness practices in her teaching to help musicians transform their playing. Her book has sold 85,000 copies in English and has been translated into Chinese, Korean, and Italian.
Inspired to help more musicians unleash their full potential, Madeline founded the Art of Practicing Institute, offering a weeklong summer program and online master classes throughout the year. The Institute provides training in mindfulness techniques, community support through discussion groups, in-depth musical work in master classes, and teacher training workshops.
Madeline has served on the Committee for Pianists’ Wellness for the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy, has helped dozens of pianists recover from practice-related injuries, and has helped free others from dependence on beta blockers in getting past performance anxiety. She has presented on injury preventive piano technique at the MedArt World Congress on Arts and Medicine and at Beth Israel Medical Center in NYC. She will be a featured speaker at a Performing Arts Medicine Association conference in March, 2021, in Tampa Florida.
An authorized instructor of mindfulness meditation in the Buddhist tradition, Madeline has presented mindfulness in secular contexts for more than 30 years. She teaches the annual, weeklong summer program “Mindfulness, Confidence & Performance” at Edinboro University. She contributed the chapter “Making Music” to The Mindfulness Revolution, a book featuring the writings of leading experts in the field of mindfulness, including Jon Kabat-Zinn. The audio of her unique Performing Beyond Fear exercise was released in 2017.
Madeline has performed as soloist with the San Francisco and Denver Symphony Orchestras and was featured on National Public Radio’s Performance Today in an interview and piano lesson broadcast in 200 cities.
She has served on the Adjunct Piano Faculty at Teachers College, Columbia University and at the New School University, and has taught graduates of Juilliard, the Manhattan School of Music, Cincinnati Conservatory, and many other leading conservatories.