Dena Kay Jones

Dr. Dena Kay Jones has performed as soloist and chamber musician throughout the United States and in Spain, Mexico, Italy and Canada. In addition to maintaining a widely varied repertoire from the standard piano literature, Dr. Jones has focused her energies in the performance and research of Spanish piano repertoire. Her debut album entitled Luces y Sombras: Piano Works by Joaquín Rodrigo was sponsored by the Spanish Embassy in conjunction with U.S. Universities and released through Centaur Records in 2007. A second recording project Haunted America Suite was released in 2015 by Summit Records, where she is a collaborative pianist with Jim and Celeste Shearer. Their trio, The Great American Trio, is comprised of horn, tuba and piano and highlights newly commissioned works by American composers for this unique instrumentation. A native of the Central Illinois area, Ms. Jones received both the Bachelor and Master of Music degrees in piano performance from the University of Illinois. Her principal teachers in Illinois were Wilma Zonn, Lydia Artymiw, William Heiles and Andrew DeGrado. In August of 2001, Dena Kay Jones completed the Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona, where she studied with Nohema Fernández. She joined the music faculty of the University of Texas at El Paso in 2002, where she is the Piano Area Coordinator and teaches applied piano, music and culture – as well as chamber piano.