Dr. Stephen Bunaman
Department Chair of Humanities & Fine Arts Professor of Music and University Organist
Stephen Burnaman, pianist, has performed throughout the United States and abroad in such major musical centers as Boston, New York, Chicago, Rome, Warsaw, Taipei and Hong Kong. Highlights include performances at the Hong Kong City Theatre, the Rome Festival in Italy, and a solo recital at the Chicago Cultural Center, which was broadcast live over the WFMT fine arts radio and television network. He has also presented lectures and papers on various aspects of piano playing, including a paper presented at the conference on the music of Amy Beach at New York’s Mannes College of Music. He is past faculty member of the Concord Community Music School in Concord, New Hampshire, and is former Lecturer in Piano Accompanying at the University of Texas at Austin.
He is currently Professor of Piano and University Organist at Huston-Tillotson University in Austin, Texas, where he also chairs the Department of Humanities and Fine Arts, and led the music program in a fund raising campaign to become an All-Steinway School. He is former president of the Austin District Music Teachers Association, which named him Teacher of the Year and twice awarded him Collegiate Teacher of the Year. In addition to serving churches in Massachusetts and Texas as pianist and organist, he also performed for five years as pianist for the Austin Singers, a professional choral ensemble.
Previously serving at Hillcrest Baptist and Redeemer Presbyterian, he is currently organist at Hyde Park Baptist Church of Austin. Burnaman completed the Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the University of Texas at Austin where he was awarded the A. David Renner Endowed Presidential Scholarship in piano and where he completed his doctoral dissertation on the piano music of American composers Edward MacDowell and Amy Beach. He holds a Master of Music degree in piano performance from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Music degree in piano performance from Stephen F. Austin State University.
While at SFA, he received the Mamie Middlebrook Award as the outstanding pianist, the President’s Award as the outstanding recitalist, the Zelma Childers Award as the outstanding graduate in the School of Fine Arts, and was inducted as a member of Pi Kappa Lambda national music honor fraternity. The SFA School of Music named him “Outstanding Music Alumnus” in 2009, and he returned to perform in a fund-raising concert in 2024. His university and conservatory teachers include Dr. Andrew Parr, Victor Rosenbaum, and Gregory Allen.
