In 2018, Melanie Foster Taylor shifted her teaching focus from working with both adults and children to work exclusively with students over the age of 18. Consistently, her students have distinguished themselves in statewide and divisional competitions. Dr. Taylor has promoted performance opportunities for pianists by establishing numerous composer festivals, concerto competitions, and piano camps.

Dr. Taylor is former president of the South Carolina Music Teachers Association, an active clinician for the Music Teachers National Association, holds national certification by that organization, and appeared as clinician for the Vermont Music Teachers Association state conference in 2004. She lectured for the College Music Society and the Society for Music Theory and has articles published in the American Music Teacher, Keyboard Companion, The Piano Quarterly, and Journal Seamus. Dr. Taylor was an  Intermediate-Advanced Keyboard Editor for Alfred Publishing Company, working closely with Maurice Hinson on numerous publications. She is a founding member of the internationally recognized Ensemble Radieuse Trio.

Dr.Taylor holds degrees in Piano Performance from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and Marshall University, and the Doctor of Music in Piano Pedagogy and Literature from Indiana University. Her teachers include John Perry, Alfonso Montecino, Kenneth Marchant and Michel Béroff. Her recital was broadcast on the National Public Radio “Music from Oberlin” series. She was the youngest winner in both the amateur and professional divisions of the Young Artist Competition of the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra.

Currently, she is learning one Prelude and Fugue per month from J.S. Bach’s The Well-Tempered Klavier and posting them on Youtube. This is affectionately known as The Bachasswards Project because she started with the last one and is moving from back to front. She is now half-way home! You can see a little sample at www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MztZOwSnMc