Pianist Stephen Mulvahill, a native of Houston, is a concert artist, educator, and scholar whose boundless curiosity and intellectual versatility have led him into a wide variety of repertoires and performance and research projects. Mulvahill is Visiting Assistant Professor of Piano at Wartburg College, where he directs the Piano Area and oversees piano recruitment and outreach. He is also Artist Faculty at InterHarmony International Music Festival in Acqui Terme, Italy.
Mulvahill is in demand as a piano soloist, chamber musician, collaborative pianist, conference presenter, and adjudicator. As a piano soloist, Mulvahill has won top prizes in the Rosen-Schaffel Concerto Competition and University of Iowa Concerto Competition. He has performed at Lincoln Center in New York City and at music festivals around the United States and in Europe, as a recipient of grants and performance awards from UNCSA’s Chrysalis Chamber Music Institute, Wartburg College, and the University of Iowa Division of Performing Arts. In 2023, Mulvahill gave a complete performance of Charles Ives’s monumental and rarely-performed Concord Sonata at the University of Iowa. In 2017, he collaborated with composer Dr. Michael Rothkopf to create the official premiere recording of Rothkopf’s Chaconne for Piano and Computer at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.
This season, Mulvahill’s engagements include performing Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Ottumwa Symphony Orchestra and the Wartburg Community Symphony, solo and chamber performances in Italy, and solo piano recitals in Iowa and parts of the Midwest. He recently performed Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue throughout the Midwest on a regional tour with the Wartburg College Wind Ensemble. He was a featured performer at the 2026 Iowa Music Teachers Association Iowa All-Stars Concert in Iowa City and, prior to that, gave performances of an under-performed set of solo piano pieces by Clara Schumann in a concert series co-sponsored by the University of Iowa and Orchestra Iowa.
Mulvahill is in the final stages of completing the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Piano Performance and Pedagogy at the University of Iowa as a student of Dr. Réne Lecuona. His research centers on expanding the diversity of music and practice in standard piano pedagogy. He gave a presentation at the 2025 Iowa Music Teachers Association state conference, sharing some of his pedagogical research on the piano music of American jazz pianist and composer Valerie Capers.
Mulvahill is certified in the Suzuki method and taught piano and conducted orchestras for six years at the internationally-recognized Preucil School of Music in Iowa City. He is an experienced musical theater and opera pianist/coach and has completed a doctoral secondary area of study in Orchestral Conducting.
Mulvahill is married to clarinetist and professor Ana Maria Locke and has a seven-year-old daughter, Anastasia Sophia. When he’s not teaching or practicing, Mulvahill enjoys being out in nature, espresso, reading, and going on adventures with his wife and daughter.
Education:
D.M.A., University of Iowa, 2026 (anticipated)
M.M., University of North Carolina School of the Arts, 2016
B.M., University of Houston, 2013
