Already as a 3-year-old girl attending the Saint Cecilia Music Academy in Lisbon, the creative process began to connect Alexandra Mascolo-David to a universe beyond the keyboard.

“I remember first touching a piano,” she says. “I put my hands up there, and I just remember falling in love with the tactile feeling under my fingers. Suddenly, I sensed an overall chemical movement within my body, a very good chemistry, like a drug, very fulfilling emotionally. And this was just by touch.”

Mascolo-David, professor in CMU’s School of Music, has not composed much music since she first reached for a keyboard. Her passion is interpreting and performing the works of others and inspiring creative discipline on the keyboard – in concert and in the classroom.

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