March 18, 2010
For Immediate Release
By Joan C. McKinney, news and publications coordinator
CAMPBELLSVILLE, Ky. – Dr. Donald Zent, professor of piano at Asbury University, will present a guest piano recital at 8 p.m. Tuesday, April 6 at Campbellsville University in The Gheens Recital Hall in the Gosser Fine Arts Center at 210 University Drive, Campbellsville, Ky.
Zent will be performing a Rondo by W. A. Mozart, nine Mazurkas by Karol Szymanowski, the Sonetto 104 of Petrarch by Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms’ Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel.
“This promises to be an exciting program,” said Dr. Wesley Roberts, professor of music at Campbellsville University. He invites the public to attend the free performance.
Zent has taught college music students for over 35 years, first at Indiana Wesleyan University (formerly Marion College), and since 1988 at Asbury University.
As professor of piano and coordinator of keyboard studies at Asbury, he teaches applied piano, group piano, piano pedagogy and form and analysis. He holds three degrees in piano performance: bachelor of music and master of music, both from Indiana University, and doctor of musical arts from the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati.
His previous piano teachers include Rebecca Penneys, Eduardo Berlendis, Santos Ojeda, Jorge Bolet, Nicholas Zumbro, Tong Il Han, Carolyn Kindley, Gizi Szanto and Delight Murphy. Two of his piano teachers can trace their piano teachers back to Franz Liszt and Ludwig van Beethoven.
Zent has performed as piano soloist with the Indiana Chamber Orchestra and the Lexington Philharmonic. He has also performed solo piano recitals at various colleges and universities including Asbury College, Indiana Wesleyan University, Anderson University, Taylor University, Transylvania University, Campbellsville University, Lindsey-Wilson College, Centre College and Murray State University.
A piano accompanist, he has performed with a long list of vocalists and instrumentalists. As a member of the Kentucky Music Teachers Association (KMTA), Zent has served as its piano chair, secretary and coordinator of collegiate competitions. He has been an adjudicator for KMTA and for the Kentucky Baptist Convention.
He has taught piano and piano pedagogy to graduate students at the Seminário Teológico Batista do Norte do Brasil in Recife, Brazil. Many of his former students are active piano teachers in both United States and Canada, and several of his former students have earned master’s degrees in piano performance.
Both Zent and his wife are involved in the Wilmore Free Methodist Church; he has served in this church in various capacities, including a short-term missions trip to Cuiabá. Brazil. His wife, Roberta, is a teaching assistant at Wilmore Elementary School and has taught mathematics at Asbury College and at Lexington Community College.
His son, Kevin, is a family physician in Greenfield, Ohio; Kevin and his wife, Autumn, have two sons and two daughters. Zent’s oldest daughter, Jenna, is an elementary school teacher in Lexington, Ky., and his youngest daughter, Cammi Hanna, and her husband, David, live in Washington D.C.
Campbellsville University is a private, comprehensive institution located in South Central Kentucky. Founded in 1906, Campbellsville University is affiliated with the Kentucky Baptist Convention and has an enrollment of 3,006 students who represent 97 Kentucky counties, 30 states and 37 foreign nations. Listed in U.S.News & World Report’s 2010 “America’s Best Colleges,” CU is ranked 23rd in “Best Baccalaureate Colleges” in the South, tied for fifth in “most international students” and fourth in “up-and-coming” schools in baccalaureate colleges in the South. CU has been ranked 17 consecutive years with U.S.News & World Report. The university has also been named to America’s Best Christian Colleges® and to G.I. Jobs magazine as a Military Friendly School. Campbellsville University is located 82 miles southwest of Lexington, Ky., and 80 miles southeast of Louisville, Ky. Dr. Michael V. Carter is in his 11th year as president.