The 96th Arizona State Music Teachers Conference
University of Arizona
School of Music
Tucson, AZ
May 28-30, 2026
PEAK PERFORMANCE
Ian Houghton, Conference Co-Chair
Daniel Linder, Conference Co-Chair
word
This year’s conference is dedicated to the intersection of psychology and music, spotlighting the advances made in the field of performance psychology. As educators we strive to provide our students with the skills needed to not just perform well but have the mental clarity and confidence to present their very best work on stage. From injury prevention and recovery to psychological resilience and performance anxiety mitigation, the lectures, panels, and workshops of this year’s conference will provide educators with an array of novel tools to guide students to their peak performance.
Featured Artists & Clinicians
Noa Kageyama
Born in Marysville, Ohio, performance psychologist Noa Kageyama is on the faculty at Juilliard and is the performance psychology coach for the New World Symphony. Kageyama has degrees from Oberlin (BA, psychology) and Juilliard (MM, violin performance) and studied with Stephen Clapp, Ronald Copes, Franco Gulli, Paul Kantor, Masao Kawasaki, Roland and Almita Vamos, and Donald Weilerstein before making the leap to psychology. He received his MS and PhD in counseling and counseling psychology from Indiana University.
Kageyama specializes in teaching performing artists how to utilize sports psychology principles to more consistently demonstrate their full abilities under pressure. He has conducted workshops at institutions including Northwestern University, New England Conservatory, Peabody, Eastman, and the U.S. Armed Forces School of Music. He has taught at programs such as the Starling-DeLay Symposium, the Perlman Music Program, and the National Orchestral Institute, and for organizations like the Music Teachers’ National Association and the National Association of Teachers of Singing.
Kageyama has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Musical America, Strings Magazine, Strad, and Lifehacker. He maintains a private coaching practice and writes a performance psychology blog, The Bulletproof Musician, which has more than 100,000 monthly readers.
Dr. Kageyama will give a keynote talk on performance psychology and run a workshop at the ASMTA conference.
Hung-Kuan Chen
Pianist Hung-Kuan Chen was born in Taipai and raised in Germany. His early studies fostered strong roots in Germanic Classicism tempered with the sensibility of Chinese philosophy. The winner of the Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition and Young Concert Artists International Auditions and the recipient of an Avery Fisher Grant, Chen has collaborated with conductors including Christoph Eschenbach and Hans Graf, and his colleagues include the Tokyo and Shanghai string quartets, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinists Cho-Liang Lin and Roman Totenberg, clarinetist David Shifrin, and pianist Tema Blackstone. An adjudicator in international competitions, including the Van Cliburn Competition, Busoni Competition, Honens Competition, and International China Competition, Chen is a former faculty member of Boston University, the New England Conservatory, and the Shanghai Conservatory, and he has been a visiting professor at Yale since 2010. He holds an Artist Diploma from the New England Conservatory where he studied with Russell Sherman. His early studies were with Hans Leygraf in Germany at the Hannover Hochschule and with Béla Böszörményi-Nagy. He has been on the faculty at Juilliard, both in the college and Pre-College Division, since 2014.
Dr. Chen will present a piano recital and run a masterclass at the ASMTA conference.
Conference Registration will be available in Early 2026
Conference Location
University of Arizona School of Music
1017 N. Olive Rd.
Tucson, AZ 85721
Conference Hotel
Tucson Marriott University Park
880 E. 2nd Street
Tucson, AZ 85719
(520) 792-4100
ASMTA has partnered with Tucson Marriott University Park to offer conference attendees a significant discount on rooms during the conference. Attendee can access the conference room rate by booking their lodging through the ASMTA website
(link to room block coming soon).
Schedule
To be announced
Honors Recital
The 2026 James R. Anthony Honors Recital finals and recital will be held Saturday, May 30, 2026. More details can be found on the ASMTA Honors Recital page.
Call for Session Proposals
Session proposals are being accepted through February 15th, 2026 at 9:00pm MST.
CLICK HERE FOR INFORMATION AND SUBMISSION FORM
Vendor/Exhibitor/Advertising Application
Conference Vendor / Exhibitor Application Form (due by April 15, 2026)
Conference Advertising Application Form (coming soon)