About
A passionate and diversely experienced musician on a mission to share the joy she finds in music, Veronica O’Brien is constantly seeking out new experiences, acquiring and refining skills, and insights to enhance her performances, teaching, and church music ministry. Although her first love is the piano, Veronica regularly employs her wide array of skills to other musical spheres as a pedagogue, choral singer, conductor, and church organist.
As a pianist, Veronica regularly shares her music through performance in concert series, benefit, and community based events. She enjoys exploring lesser known masterworks of the repertoire, particularly works of twentieth and twenty-first century composers. Veronica is active as a solo recitalist and collaborative pianist, in addition to her regular work with community choirs, instrumentalists, and chamber ensembles. Veronica’s performing endeavors have taken her to such venues as Steinway Hall, Montclair State University, and the Cathedral of St. Francis in Metuchen, NJ as a soloist for Mozart's Piano Concerto in D minor, and the Bar Harbor Music Festival, among many others.
Veronica has a particular love for sharing music through teaching and maintains a private studio in Northern NJ. She discovered her love for teaching during her undergraduate studies, and upon graduation further honed her own pianistic and pedagogical skills and understanding by studying the Taubman Approach in-depth in private study with John Bloomfield of the Golandsky Institute as well as attending workshops and symposiums. These new insights led Veronica to achieve further success as a teacher, and led her to pursue graduate study with a focus on piano pedagogy at The Hartt School with Dr. David Westfall. During her years in graduate school, Veronica held positions at The Hartt School teaching class piano to music and music theater majors, as well as teaching at The Hartt School Community Division. Veronica currently maintains a private studio in Northern NJ and is still expanding her toolbox through research in cognitive psychology and how to integrate science-based teaching techniques into the private piano lesson. She has presented her work at the National Conference for Keyboard Pedagogy in 2025. Veronica also holds a Level 1 certificate as a specialist in Early Childhood Music and Movement Development through the Gordon Institute for Music Learning Theory. Also a choral enthusiast with experience in a variety of settings, Veronica has also studied choral conducting and directed community-based choirs. She freelances as a choral singer, and has sung in choruses with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, as well as performances in Carnegie Hall, Rachmaninov Hall in the Moscow Conservatory, and several performances in St. Petersburg, Russia. Veronica also has a keen interest in the way the human mind and body work in an effort to make her own musical activities more effective as well as her teaching techniques and the precise ways in which she trains skills with her students. She has a keen interest in exploring psychology in an effort to understand herself and her interactions with others. In addition to the Taubman Approach to piano, which trains people to play piano in a physically healthy way, Veronica has also studied Body Mapping and is currently a student of the Alexander Technique. Veronica has been active in church music ministry for over ten years, and is currently the Director of Music at St. Thomas More Church in Morristown, NJ. She earned a Master’s degree in Piano Performance/ Pedagogy Emphasis and a Graduate Professional Diploma in Piano Performance from The Hartt School at the University of Hartford where she was a student of Dr. David Westfall. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Piano Performance from the John J. Cali School of Music at Montclair State University as a student of Dr. Ruth Rendleman. Her other teachers have included Olegna Fuschi, Dr. Allison Brewster Franzetti, and John Bloomfield. She has also studied organ with Dr. Ezequiel Menendez at the Cathedral of St. Joseph and Joseph Wozniak, choral conducting with James Little, and voice and Alexander Technique with Valerie Van Hoven. In her free time, Veronica enjoys hiking, photography, exploring psychology, and expanding her musical skills.