Carol Rosenberger - Biography

Biography

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Carol studied in the U.S. with Webster Aitken and Katja Andy; in Paris with the legendary Nadia Boulanger; and in Vienna with harpsichordist/ Baroque scholar Eta Harich-Schneider and Schenker theorist Franz Eibner. She has been the subject of articles in many of the nation’s leading newspapers and magazines, and in 1976 was chosen to represent America’s women concert artists by the President’s National Commission on the Observance of International Women’s Year. She has been on the faculties of the University of Southern California, California State University Northridge and Immaculate Heart College. She has given performance workshops for young musicians on campuses nationwide.

Carol has given numerous benefit performances for physical rehabilitation programs, an effort motivated by her own experience. Her official debut was delayed ten years by an attack of paralytic polio at the outset of her career. The disease damaged most severely the very muscles needed for piano playing. Carol spent those ten years of seclusion and rehabilitation partly in Vienna, studying Baroque style and theory at the Academy, and absorbing German lieder, opera, instrumental music and literature. Carol is currently working on a book about her experiences.

Between the late 1960s and the early 1980s, Carol was a member of the piano faculties of the University of Southern California, Immaculate Heart College, and California State University, Northridge. At USC she taught a workshop for instrumentalists and vocalists entitled "Preparation for Performance," which drew upon the techniques she had developed to rehabilitate her own playing from the after-effects of paralytic polio. On her concert tours throughout the U.S., she often included piano workshops while performing at universities.

After making a number of recordings for Delos, Carol became interested in classical recording production, and began co-producing recordings with Delos founder Amelia Haygood. The Delos Recordings for Young People series was a result of this partnership.

Since the death of Delos founder Amelia Haygood in 2007, Carol has taken on a larger responsibility for the label, and is now its Director.