Mark Roth earned a Bachelor of Music Education degree from Ohio State University in 1992. He began piano study at age six. In 1987, he was awarded a full tuition scholarship to the OSU School of Music based on his piano audition and music theory placement test. At Ohio State, he studied piano with Rosemary Platt and Nelson Harper, voice with Mark Baker, piano pedagogy with Jerry Lowder, vocal pedagogy and choral conducting with James Gallagher and Maurice Casey, and string pedagogy with Robert Gillespie. He played piano for the Men's Glee Club, The Scarlet and Gray Show, and was accompanist for numerous vocalists and instrumentalists. Mark sang baritone and bass in the OSU Symphonic Choir and Men's Glee Club under James Gallagher, and the OSU Chorale under Maurice Casey. He was music director for The Music Man (1989) and Guys and Dolls (1991) at the Ritz Theatre for the Performing Arts in Tiffin, Ohio, and organist at Ss. Peter and Paul Church in Attica, Ohio (which closed in 2005) for two years. The proudest moments in his musical career were his graduating piano recital at Ohio State and performing in the choir on the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra's CD of Mahler's Eighth Symphony under the direction of the late choral music legend, Robert Shaw.
Mark has been a piano technician since 1995, and estimates that he has done over 4000 tunings. Besides music, he enjoys reading, hiking and botany, photography, painting, visual art, architecture and history, Macintosh, travel, bicycling, family time, and vegetarian cooking. Mark is also a Suzuki Piano Teacher and has completed teacher training required by the Suzuki Association of The Americas. Mark is also the staff piano technician for the Colorado Suzuki Institute and Chamber Music of the Rockies.
It is hard to believe but most piano tuner/technicians are not pianists as well. My background in classical music, including five and a half years of college level piano lessons, allows me to judge the condition of a piano not just from a technical standpoint, but from the point of view of an experienced pianist and a trained musician. This additional frame of reference is a valuable asset when helping a customer get the most out of an instrument. Someone without this experience would have difficulty understanding how the technical workings of the piano are directly related to piano technique and musical expression. This knowledge is a definite advantage.