Hannah Voigt taught piano in Oak Park and performed in the Chicago area for six decades while also mentoring other piano teachers through the Chicago Area Music Teachers Association.
Voigt oversaw the association’s annual Achievement in Music program for many years, which administers AIM exams to private piano students all throughout the Chicago area.
“Hannah had a reputation in Oak Park of being one of the most sought-after piano teachers, and she was the go-to person and a consummate musician,” said Martha Swisher, the music director at the Unity Temple in Oak Park.
Voigt, 87, died of complications from a chronic lung condition on March 7 at her home, said her husband, Burton Andersen. She was a longtime Oak Park resident.
Voight was born Hannah Louise Wilkins in Gloversville, N.Y., to parents who worked in the glove-making industry. She took piano lessons from an early age and by high school was serving as her church’s organist.
Voigt received a bachelor’s degree in music teacher education from the State University of New York at Potsdam’s Crane School of Music.
“Hannah was always the first choice for those preparing recitals,” said Judith Niles, Voigt’s college roommate and lifelong friend. “Being her roommate and friend, I always had Hannah. She was able to make the soloist better with her amazing ability to understand the lines and intent of the music. Her skill and musicianship elevated the accompaniment and the performer to do the best possible interpretation of any given piece.”
Voigt taught piano at the Crane School before picking up a master’s degree in music from the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music in 1962. During graduate school, Voigt studied in the summer in Fontainebleau, France, with noted French music teacher Nadia Boulanger and with French composer Robert Casadesus and his equally well-known son, Jean.
Voigt taught piano at the Eastman School of Music for a year before moving to Chicago in 1963 with her husband and settled in Oak Park.
Possessing perfect pitch, Voigt joined the Chicago Symphony Chorus as a soprano, and the chorus’ famed conductor and director, Margaret Hillis, enlisted Voigt to teach sight singing, or reading a piece of music vocally to fellow choristers.
Voigt taught piano from her private studio in Oak Park, and she also inaugurated the Unity Temple Concert Series at the well-known Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house of worship during the 1970s, performing alongside baritone Robert Smith. A September 1976 Tribune article highlighted Voigt’s role as part of a “Wright Plus” weekend, an annual tour put on by the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio Foundation. Voigt and Smith performed a benefit concert that autumn at Unity Temple.
“She was extremely specific to the details of making music, of phrase shape (and) of fingering,” Swisher said. “Her interpretations were extremely sensitive and well thought out, she understood the origin of every piece of music, the composer and when it was composed, and she had perfect pitch, so she could transpose and change the keys of any piece of music.”
As a piano teacher, Voigt “was very disciplined and was able to instill that necessary skill in her students,” Niles said.
Voigt accompanied various community choirs and would perform in solo and collaborative recitals, and was the organist at Fair Oaks Presbyterian Church in Oak Park for a half-century.
Voigt played a key role in revising the curriculum of the Chicago Area Music Teachers Association, and created many of the harmonizations in the curriculum, known as Achievement in Music, or AIM. Today, AIM is an annual exam practiced by numerous piano teachers throughout the Chicago area.
“Hannah was extremely intelligent and musical through and through, but unlike many who are extremely intelligent and musically gifted, she was quite modest and down to earth,” said Kris Konrad, a piano teacher and mentee of Voigt who entered her own students in the association’s AIM program. “She was very approachable, which made her an excellent teacher and collaborative musician.”
Voigt’s daughter Laura, who also is an Oak Park-based piano teacher, said that her mother “did a huge amount of work in revising this exam system.”
The Chicago Area Music Teachers Association named Voigt its Teacher of the Year in 2021.
Voigt continued to teach up until her death.
Voigt’s first husband, Harry Voigt, died in 2007. In addition to her second husband, whom she married in 2015, and her daughter, Voigt also is survived by a son, Derek; and four granddaughters.
A celebration of life service will take place at 1 p.m. Saturday, April 19, at Unity Temple, 875 Lake St., Oak Park.
Bob Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
