Elizabeth Swarthout, a gradu­ate of the Preparatory Depart­ment at Eastman School of Music, received an MS degree in social work at Columbia University and her second BA degree in music at the University of California, Berkeley.

A versatile pianist, Ms. Swarthout made a CD, which was funded in part by the National Endow­ment for the Arts, called 20th Century Four-Hand Pi­ano Music, with Margret Elson on the Laurel Record label in 1996. The Elson–Swarthout Duo performed together for 25 years, including an East Coast tour in 1997, during which they played at the Kennedy Center, among other venues. With Margret Elson, Ms. Swarthout created the Clementi-Mozart Con­test, which featured performances on the fortepiano. Ms. Swarthout has given lectures, workshops, and performances for various Suzuki Institutes locally and nationally. A Baroque specialist, she has given master classes in Portland and in the San Francisco Bay Area, has adjudicated for decades at various Ba­roque festivals, and has given lectures locally and na­tionally on early-music performance practices. She is in demand as an adjudicator for competitions and for the Certificate of Merit.

Ms. Swarthout began studying the Taubman Ap­proach in 1985 with Nina Scolnik and currently studies with John Bloomfield and Edna Golandsky. She has been a faculty member for the Golandsky Institute since 2005, Master Teacher since 2010 and teaches the Taubman Ap­proach in the San Francisco Bay Area and Davis, California, as well as in Granada, Spain. She was also the founder and director for 15 years of the Golandsky Institute Berkeley Seminar on the Taubman Approach presented annually in November. She continues to serve as a faculty member. She has given numerous talks on the Taubman Approach. She also teaches fortepiano and performs as soloist and chamber musician on piano and fortepiano.