Kara Benyas

Piano
241 Altgeld
kbenyas@siu.edu
618-453-5834

Pianist Kara Benyas currently serves on the faculty of the Southern Illinois University Carbondale School of Music as Staff Accompanist. She was previously on the McKendree College Department of Music faculty. Her college teaching experience includes music history, literature, theory, fundamentals, counterpoint, and applied piano. She holds a Master of Music degree in Piano Performance from Northwestern University, where she was a student of Alan Chow, and a Bachelor of Music, Magna cum Laude, in Piano Performance from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where she was a student of Wilfred Delphin and Sook Ryeon Park. Ms. Benyas has also studied at the Aspen Music School under Frank Weinstock and Anton Nel. While at Northwestern, she was an accompanist for the voice studio of the late William Warfield. Ms. Benyas also spent a summer as an accompanist with the Des Moines Metro Opera. Ms. Benyas has appeared several times as a soloist with the Chicago Chamber Orchestra, on subscription concerts in downtown Chicago and on tour throughout the Midwest. She has also appeared on the Dame Myra Hess Recital Series at the Chicago Cultural Center, a performance broadcast on local television, on WFMT-FM in Chicago and syndicated nationally over the internet. In 2004, she and her husband established Klassics for Kids, a popular monthly concert series that exposes preschool children to a variety of live classical music.