Matteo Favero
While growing up in central Illinois, Matteo participated regularly in the National Federation of Music Clubs piano festivals consistently earning superior ratings. He has the gold cups to prove it. Initially attending the University of Evansville on scholarship for Music Therapy, he transferred to Southern Illinois University Edwardsville where he earned a Bachelor’s of Music in Piano Performance. While there he received the Honors Convocation Award two years in a row. From SIUE he directly attended the Chicago College of Performing Arts within Roosevelt University on scholarship earning a Master’s of Music in Piano Performance. During his second year of graduate school he began teaching piano at Maywood Fine Arts in a suburb of Chicago. He has continuously taught piano since that time. He sustained a home studio in Charlottesville, Virginia from 2004 through 2010 participating as a member of the Charlottesville Music Teacher’s Association. In that capacity he also performed for their opening luncheon as well as serving as accompanist. Other teaching experiences in Charlottesville include accompanying the student choir at the Charlottesville Day School and teaching individual lessons to students at Ivy Creek School. Not long after moving to Collegeville in 2010 Matteo began teaching piano at the Community Music School. While there he also performed in multiple Bach’s lunches as soloist and accompanist. He also became a certified Music Together instructor in order to lead preschool music classes at Tomorrow’s Leaders in Norristown, Pa. In both Charlottesville and Collegeville he has offered his services playing piano in his local church.
Matteo has had the privilege of serving as an adjudicator for the Hong Kong Schools Music Festival, having been invited three times to do so. The first was in 2005, the other two times being in 2011 and 2023. In this role he has listened to and written comments for over 6,000 piano students.
Two of his favorite music experiences have been performing in Gamelan Orchestras. The first was at the University of Virginia under the direction of Cindy Benton-Groner in 2008, and the other one was at Swarthmore in 2019 under the direction of Tom Whitman.
He resides in Collegeville with his wife and two children. He is an avid cyclist, and enjoys growing blue corn and harvesting black walnuts from his yard.
