Lenore Hiebert is currently a lecturer at California State University, Fresno, teaching there since the year 2000 in the areas of piano, class piano, music theory, music fundamentals, sight singing, and ear training. Prior to being appointed to this teaching position, she served as a department collaborative pianist for many years, accompanying outside artist performances, degree recitals, faculty recitals, and department opera productions. Collaborative piano performing remains a strong interest and she performs frequently with her husband, Tom Hiebert, horn professor at CSUF.
Lenore’s B.A. degree in Piano was earned at Bethel College in North Newton, Kansas, from which she also later obtained a teaching certificate in K – 12 Music Education. Further study opportunities for her occurred in diverse locations such as Alaska, Salzburg, and Dresden in the former East Germany. After teaching in the schools for a year, accompanying began to take more and more of Lenore’s time and energies and so she pursued a master’s degree in Piano Performance that came from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1985. After that, she was employed as a music department accompanist at several universities until beginning to teach at CSU, Fresno.
Teaching interests include creating her own teaching materials, guides, and self-published low-cost textbooks, such as her “Piano-Focused Fundamentals” workbook. Lenore has been a church musician from a young age and as such pursued her interests in voice, guitar, and oboe as well as piano. Presently she shares accompanying duties with several others at Willow Avenue Mennonite Church in Fresno. Lenore is a member of the local piano teachers’ group and maintains a small private piano teaching studio for pre- and post-college students.
In her free time one of the things she enjoys most is travel, especially trips to visit the three adult Hiebert children in Boston, Oakland, and Seattle, although any new vistas are of interest. Lenore is a regular and enthusiastic participant in Willow Avenue’s writing group, and enjoys nature journaling on her own. Other outdoor activities such as gardening, walking, and bicycling are high on her list of hobbies as well.