Lesley McAllister, DMA
Professor of Piano Director of Piano Pedagogy Keyboard Studies Division Director
Piano Pedagogy
Lesley McAllister, D.M.A., is Professor of Piano, Director of Piano Pedagogy, and Director of Keyboard Studies at Baylor University. In addition to teaching piano pedagogy, she also teaches courses on performer wellness and class piano and directs the Piano Laboratory Program for children in the community. Dr. McAllister holds degrees in performance from the University of Houston and Florida State University, studying with Nancy Weems and Leonard Mastrogiacomo, as well as a DMA in piano performance and pedagogy from the University of Oklahoma, where she studied with Jane Magrath. Her research interests include imagery, mind-body relaxation techniques for performance anxiety, mental rehearsal, and yoga for musicians.
In 2019, she was awarded the Outstanding Faculty Award in Research for Tenured Professors at Baylor University; she also received a Centennial Professor Award in 2021 and is a 2023-24 Baylor Fellow. She has presented at such national conferences as the Music Teachers National Association, National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy, Group Piano and Piano Pedagogy (GP3) Forum, and College Music Society, as well as international conferences of the Performing Arts Medicine Association symposium and International Society of Music Educators. Published several times in American Music Teacher, she was awarded the 2010 “Article of the Year" award by the Music Teachers National Association. She has also been published in Piano Magazine, Piano Pedagogy Forum, and the MTNA E-Journal; has served as co-investigator with the Mind Body Medicine Institute at Baylor; and has co-authored an article in Frontiers in Psychology.
Previously the chair of the editorial board for the MTNA E-Journal, she currently serves as the Wellness Column Editor for Piano Magazine. A certified RYT-200 yoga instructor, she is author of two books on musician wellness: The Balanced Musician: Integrating Mind and Body for Peak Performance and Yoga in the Music Studio, which was published by Oxford Press in 2020. In June 2023, Dr. McAllister began a three-year term as Faculty Regent and also currently serves as the Faculty-in-Residence at the all-female Collins Hall. She received the Outstanding Service Award from the Frances Clark Center for Keyboard Pedagogy in 2023 and was honored with the Collegiate Teacher of the Year Award from the Texas Music Teachers Association in 2022.