Nicole Di Paolo
Praised as a "sensitive pianist" and "outstanding accompanist" who delivers "powerful interpretations," Nicole Elyse DiPaolo is a versatile collaborative pianist, composer, teacher, and arranger currently based in Cleveland, Ohio, US.
Nicole has appeared as a concerto soloist and ensemble pianist with the Ambassador Chamber Players on multiple occasions (two of which also featured her own Piano Trio in C minor) and as a recitalist, collaborator, and presenter worldwide. She holds a B.Mus in Music Theory from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, where she studied piano under Michele Cooker and Louis Nagel; additionally, she studied composition with Bright Sheng and basso continuo (harpsichord accompaniment) with Edward Parmentier. Nicole also holds an MM in Music Theory from Indiana University-Bloomington, where she has now achieved Ph.D. candidacy in the same field alongside appearing widely as a freelance collaborator (a passion she quite accidentally discovered when she no longer had to be in the choir and was looking for ways to continue performing!). To further her vocal coaching skills, she has taken additional French and German diction courses with Prof. Gary Arvin. Currently, Nicole is an Adjunct Lecturer in Music (Music in General Studies) at IU and sought-after online instructor of piano, music theory, and composition, as well as an active collaborator and church pianist around the Cleveland area. Nicole has enjoyed musical partnerships with students of nearly every current IU voice department faculty member. In addition, she was the rehearsal pianist/coach for a summer production of John Frederick Lampe's little-known Baroque opera Pyramus and Thisbe. In June 2018, Nicole was a Collaborative Piano Fellow at the Bay View Music Festival in Petoskey, Michigan, performing with the festival's SOARS voice program participants on fully staged opera scenes and art song recitals as well as in the Bay View Young Artist Series (Charlevoix, MI). Other notable recent engagements include five Quarantine Concerts and a live-streamed production of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte with the Spooky Goose Opera (2020); several Bloomington-area fundraising concerts, including the "Opera Night at North" benefit with students of IU's top-ranked opera program (among them "Accidental Tenor" Andrew Lunsford); and two long-term, international cruise ship performing contracts with violinist Amy Lee as the Duo del Mare. Additionally, she recorded an album of unique folksong settings with bass-baritone and IU Kelley School of Business professor Timothy Fort, which are included in his new business ethics text, Vision of the Firm. Nicole continues to compose as well as arrange, and her concert compositions have been described as "very effective" with a "fantastic amount of intrigue," "mindfulness...[and] colorful nuance" (Seven Sky Music). In 2014 Nicole published a set of twenty short pedagogical pieces in uncommon keys, entitled Venturing Beyond, for early-intermediate pianists of all ages, and she is currently working on Vignettes, a set of late-intermediate pieces that introduce students to the language of Maurice Ravel. Also a sought-after composition teacher and adjudicator, Nicole frequently judges state, regional, and divisional MTNA composition competitions at all levels, ranging from elementary to college-level Young Artists.
Nicole’s dual passions for collaborative piano and composition have merged in her ongoing arranging project, Accessible Accompaniments, a series of genuinely playable reductions and ready-made audition cuts for some of the most notoriously difficult public-domain arias in the operatic literature. They can be browsed and purchased at www.accessibleaccompaniments.weebly.com . For more information on Nicole’s artistic pursuits, please visit her website posted below www.ndipaolo.musicaneo.com .