Sara Langmead
Dr. Sara Wandrei Langmead is thrilled to be a Teaching Artist in Piano at MacPhail Center for Music. Since 2022, her students have participated in numerous recitals, competitions, masterclasses, and performance/theory exams through the MacPhail Honors and Concerto Competitions, Minnesota Music Teachers Association, Minneapolis Music Teachers Forum, and St. Paul Piano Teachers Association. Many of her students have been accepted into college programs at schools such as Manhattan School of Music, UCLA, UW-Madison, UM-Twin Cities, and UM-Duluth. Dr. Langmead loves inspiring her students, ages 7-79, to continue their unique journey of self-discovery and introspection through learning the piano, and together, they find a deep joy in life through playing great music from all genres.
A Minnesota native, Dr. Sara holds the Master of Music and the Doctor of Musical Arts degrees from the Peabody Conservatory of Music-Johns Hopkins University where she studied piano with Dr. Yoheved Kaplinsky, current chair of the Juilliard Piano Department. As a full-tuition Strelow Scholar, she received her Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Sara made her orchestral debut at age 16, won first prizes in the Schubert Club and UW-Madison Concerto competitions at the collegiate level, and at 19, was awarded full scholarships to study with György Sebok for two summers at the Banff Centre in Canada. In 1997, she won first prize at the International Sigma Alpha Iota Competition. She is deeply grateful to her mentors, Veda Kaplinsky, the late György Sebok, the late Dominique Weber, Julian Martin, Dr. Sharon Levy, Dr. Eileen Soskin, the late Anthony di Bonaventura, Dr. Todd Welbourne, Howard Karp, and Minnesota teacher, Jeanné Reher, for seeing her potential and helping her harness it.
Starting in 1997, Dr. Langmead held successive piano faculty positions at St. Mary’s College-Maryland, the University of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia College-Missouri, and at Mercyhurst University-Pennsylvania, where she was Assistant Professor of Piano and Director of Keyboard Studies. After a 2004 season of fourteen different concerts and the birth of her second child, Dr. Langmead chose full-time work as a parent over her tenure-track position in academia. Over the next 18 years, she raised four children and built a successful private piano studio in Circle Pines, Minnesota.
Dr. Sara is committed to expanding the canon of solo piano literature to include traditionally underrepresented composers throughout history and from around the globe. In 2024-2025, as the recipient of research grants from the Music Teachers National Association and MacPhail Center for Music, Dr. Langmead curated MacPhail’s IDEA Syllabus and the March 2025 Women’s History Month Music Festival, a free and inspiring series of live recitals, educational commentary, and video clips of composer and performer stories.
At the local and national level, Dr. Langmead performs as a soloist and chamber musician. She also presents workshops regarding piano technique, musical gesture, gender representation in piano literature, and Women Play Beethoven, her lecture-recital highlighting the legacy and phenomenon of women who have performed and recorded the complete piano sonata cycle of Beethoven. Dr. Langmead’s lifelong passion for all piano music enriches the lives of her students and listeners by communicating passionate, creative, and academic insight through her enthusiastic teaching, performance, studio class, adjudication, writing, and discussion.
