Susann McDonald
Distinguished Professor, Chair of Harp Department
Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University
Susann McDonald is recognized as one of the world’s leading performers and teachers of the harp. She is chairman of Indiana University’s harp department, the largest in the world, where she holds the title of Distinguished Professor of Music. She serves also as the Artistic Director of the World Harp Congress, Inc. and is the Founder and Artistic Director of the renowned USA International Harp Competition.
Susann McDonald received the Premier Prix de Harpe from the Paris Conservatory in France where she studied with famed pedagogue, Henriette Renié. She has recorded and performed much of the important harp repertoire. She has taught master-classes in many of the leading conservatories in Europe, Asia, South America and in the United States.
She was chairman of the harp department at the Juilliard School in New York from 1975-85. She also chaired harp departments at the University of Southern California and the University of Arizona.
She has served on the juries of most of the important international harp competitions in Israel, Japan, Munich, Geneva, Rome, France, Russia and the Netherlands.
Her students have consistently won many important national and international competitions, as well as being recognized among today’s leading concert harpists and teachers. They also have been the principal harpists with the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, the Detroit Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Seattle Symphony, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Orchestre Nationale de France, and many others.
