Birgit Matzerath was born and raised in Cologne, Germany. She holds a degree in piano and a teaching degree in music and English from Hochschule für Musik and Universität Köln. For twenty years, she taught piano at community music schools in the Cologne area and performed as a collaborative pianist. In 1997, she began to study piano with Seymour Bernstein in NYC, which eventually led to her relocation to the US in 2002.

For seven years she was a full-time member of the piano faculty at the Concord Community Music School, in Concord, New Hampshire. In addition to teaching private piano lessons, she gave workshops about practicing and performing. A highlight among her recitals on the school’s concert series was a complete performance of J.S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier I, which she also performed in Germany.  

In 2009 she moved to Maplewood, NJ, where she maintains a private studio. In addition to teaching she continues to perform as a soloist and collaborative pianist. She presented J.S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier Book 2 in an extended project for the Ethical Culture Society of Essex County in 2013. A one-year “Journey through J.S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier 1” that featured monthly lecture recitals exploring the Preludes and Fugues followed in 2019/2020.

Ms Matzerath has also held lectures and recitals, frequently about Bach’s piano music, for various organizations, among them the “Sonata” piano camp in Bennington VT, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Adult Education program of the Unitarian Church of All Souls in NYC and the “Pianophoria!” Piano camp in NYC; the Adult Music Student Forum in Washington DC, and, most recently, the Mac Phail Music Center and the Minneapolis Music Teachers Association in Minneapolis, MN 

Ms Matzerath’s blog “Music, Life and other Challenges” can be found on blogspot. In 2018, she published a memoir about her unusual journey as a musician, that led from Germany to Japan, Russia, and ultimately to the United States. “More than the World in Black and White – How music came alive and my life became music” is available on Amazon.