​Elissa Miller-Kay

Award-winning pianist Dr. Elissa Miller-Kay has performed in cities throughout North America and Southeast Asia. As a concerto soloist, she has appeared with the Mississauga Symphony, the Oakville Symphony, the Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber Orchestra, the York Symphony, and the Greater Toronto Philharmonic. Recital engagements include performances at Steinway Hall, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, and Bohemian National Hall in New York City; the Beethoven Club in Memphis; Markham Theater in Markham, Ontario; and the Goethe Institute in Bangkok, Thailand. In 2009, Dr. Miller-Kay was the first prize winner of the International Beethoven Piano Sonata Competition in Memphis, TN. In 2006, she won the Ben Steinberg Musical Legacy Award, a scholarship given annually to an outstanding young Canadian Musician. Her performance of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata, Op. 110 in a master class with Seymour Bernstein was featured in the documentary Seymour: An Introduction, directed by Ethan Hawke.

In addition to performance, Dr. Miller-Kay is a passionate educator. She is currently the Music Manager at Zeta Charter Schools in New York City where she oversees a wide range of music programs for K-12 students across the network's seven schools. From 2016 to 2021 she was a lecturer at the Princess Galyani Vadhana Institute of Music in Bangkok, Thailand, where she taught piano, chamber music, music history, and research methodology. Dr. Miller-Kay has also previously served as the director of the piano department at the Naissance Music Academy in Bangkok, Thailand and taught piano at the New School for Music Study in Kingston, New Jersey.

​Dr. Miller-Kay holds a PhD in Piano Studies from New York University, as well as degrees in piano performance from Oberlin College (Bachelor of Music) and Mannes College (Master of Music), and a Licentiate Diploma with First Class Honors from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, Canada.

Dr. Miller-Kay has published papers on Beethoven reception and nineteenth-century piano performance practices as well as an open-access Thai/English beginner piano method book, “Piano, So Fun!” (เปียโนสนุกจัง), available for download at pianosofun.com.