The Hugh Hodgson School of Music is pleased to announce that Emely Phelps will join the faculty as assistant professor of piano beginning August 1, 2026.

Praised by the Boston Globe for her “fleet, energetic, and bright-toned” playing, pianist Emely Phelps enjoys a versatile career as a chamber musician, soloist, and teacher. Second prize winner of the 2023 Ernst Bacon Prize for American Music, Emely has given more than 50 performances over the past two years, with recent highlights including an all-American solo recital and educational residency in Ruth Crawford Seeger’s birthplace of East Liverpool, OH, chamber music performances with A Far Cry and the Cassatt Quartet, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with the Ohio University Wind Symphony, and duo recitals with violinist Christine Harada Li,  flutist Jeiran Hasan, and trombonist Lucas Borges.

Phelps made her solo orchestral debut at the age of 16 with the National Symphony Orchestra, and has since been a featured concerto soloist with orchestras such as the Bismarck-Mandan Symphony Orchestra, Las Colinas Symphony Orchestra and Washington Metropolitan Philharmonic. She has presented solo recitals throughout North America and Europe with a diverse repertoire ranging from Bach to Carter, and is a particularly passionate advocate for new music, having given world premieres of more than a dozen compositions and worked closely with Jörg Widmann, Shulamit Ran, Lei Liang, Robert McClure, and Richard Wernick in performances of their works. Her first solo album featuring a survey of American piano music, including works by Ruth Crawford Seeger, Elliott Carter, Robert McClure and a new co-commission from Tyson Gholston Davis, will be released on Navona records later this year.

An in-demand collaborator, Phelps has been on the faculty of the T-Town Chamber Music Festival, Icicle Creek Chamber Music Festival, Anchorage Chamber Music Festival and Yellow Barn Young Artists Program, performs regularly with Electric Earth Concerts, and has attended numerous other chamber music festivals, including five summers at Yellow Barn and three summers at Kneisel Hall. She has appeared as a guest artist with the Borromeo String Quartet, and maintains active duo partnerships with violist Jonathan Bagg and flutist Hannah Porter Occeña. Phelps recently recorded her third CD with Occeña, with previous releases including Discovering Her Voice and Confluence, and also appears on the Delos label with violinist Dawn Wohn (Unbounded, 2023), all highlighting duos by female composers.

As a founding member of Trio Cleonice, Phelps spent eight years with the ensemble, performing across the United States, touring Europe - including a recital at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam - and winning second prize at the Schoenfeld International String Competition in Harbin, China. The group also served as the Graduate Piano Trio-in-Residence at New England Conservatory for three years, and from 2014-2016 curated a monthly chamber music series, Trio Cleonice and Friends, in Brookline, Massachusetts, with the aim of making chamber music an accessible and integral part of the community. 

Phelps is delighted to join the University of Georgia as Assistant Professor of Piano in Fall 2026, having served there for the past year in a limited-term capacity. Prior to her appointment at UGA, she was an Associate Professor of Instruction at Ohio University, where from 2019-2025 she co-chaired the keyboard division, taught applied piano, chamber music, and keyboard repertoire, and directed the graduate collaborative piano degree program. Emely has given master classes at numerous universities and been a featured presenter at the Ohio Music Teachers Association State Conference, Washington Music Teacher’s Association District III Conference, and Ohio University’s Piano Pedagogy Seminar. 

Born in Frederick, Maryland, Phelps began her piano studies with Carole Kriewaldt and Marjorie Lee before receiving her B.M. and M.M. from the Juilliard School as a student of Julian Martin. She holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts from Stony Brook University, where she studied with Christina Dahl, and a Graduate Diploma in chamber music from NEC, where she had the privilege of being mentored by Vivian Weilerstein during Trio Cleonice’s residency at the institution.