HeatherBosshardtPianist · Vocalist · Composer · Educator · Artist

“I heard Für Elise when I was young and something in me just knew. I had to play that piece. I had no idea it would lead to this — to a life built entirely around music and what it can do for people.”

Heather grew up surrounded by healers — her mother, her aunt, her grandmother, all chiropractors who believed the body and spirit were inseparably connected. When the time came to choose her own path, music answered the same calling. Her musical life began at twelve in Monmouth, Illinois, sitting at the piano bench of her small congregation, accompanying hymns for church. A simple act of service — that changed everything.

What followed was decades of serious study, performance, and teaching across multiple traditions — classical, jazz, Celtic, gospel, sacred music. Dual Master of Music degrees in Classical and Jazz Piano. Five years of private classical study with Steinway Artist Vedrana Subotic, DMA. Three years studying jazz with Reggie Thomas of the Count Basie Orchestra in St. Louis. Three years of gospel study alongside Debra Bonner and David Blakely. And ten years of summer workshops with Juilliard and Manhattan School of Music faculty.

As a child, Heather was always told to speak up. Painfully shy — and believing for years she couldn’t sing. In 2022 she began intensive study with Debra Bonner — 20-year associate of Seth Riggs, 9-year associate of Richard Miller — and discovered she had a voice. That it could be beautiful. That finding it, literally, brought confidence and healing to her relationships and changed how she moves through the world. She now teaches this lineage with personal conviction: she knows from the inside what it means to find your voice.

River Music Studios is the expression of everything that certainty has built.

In 2026, she was named a Utah Artist Fellow by the Utah Division of Arts & Museums — a recognition she receives as both an honor and a continuation of the calling that began at twelve, accompanying hymns in a small congregation in rural Illinois.

In her studio, Heather looks at the whole picture. Posture, alignment, and technique are informed by her deep understanding of the human body. Rest, hydration, and physical care are part of the conversation. So is the emotional and spiritual work of facing fear, building confidence, and becoming.

Heather’s musical identity is genuinely multi-traditional — not a jack of all trades, but a master who has gone deep into each of the traditions she inhabits. Her Irish heritage gives Celtic music a personal and ancestral dimension. Her classical training is informed by some of the most distinguished teachers in the field — Steinway Artists and faculty from Juilliard, the Manhattan School of Music, and the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. Her jazz is rooted in the rich musical culture of St. Louis, where she studied and performed. And her sacred music comes from thirty years of showing up every Sunday and doing the work.

As a professional collaborative artist and accompanist, she has spent her career in service of other musicians’ artistry — a discipline that develops a particular kind of listening, sensitivity, and musical generosity that she brings to her teaching.

The result is an artist — and a teacher — who genuinely lives at the intersection of multiple worlds, and who can guide students into whichever of those worlds calls to them.