Margaret Baxtresser

A supporter of the arts in her local community of Akron, Ohio, as well as internationally, she was a professor emerita at Kent State University, where she taught piano for 25 years.

At the time of her death in 2005, the Tuesday Musical Association in Akron, Ohio, established a fund to dedicate one concert each season in tribute to Baxtresser.

Baxtresser left her historic Bechstein piano to the Schubert Club in Saint Paul, Minnesota to be a part of their Museum of Musical Instruments.

It stayed in DeBodo’s home and was reportedly played by Johannes Brahms, Franz Liszt, Gustav Mahler, Béla Bartok, Zoltán Kodaly, and Ernst von Dohnanyi.

[3] While Baxtresser owned the piano, it was played by leading composers, conductors, and concert pianists of the time who visited her home in Akron including André Watts, Leonard Slatkin, Ned Rorem, Maxim Shostakovich, Vincent Persichetti, and Vladimir Ashkenazy.