Ann Sears is Professor of Music and Director of Performance at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, where she teaches piano and courses in American music.   Currently she is director of the Evelyn Danzig Haas ’39 Visiting Arts Program and holder of the Mary Heuser Endowed Chair in the Arts.  She holds degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music, Arizona State University, and The Catholic University of America, where her doctoral dissertation was about American art song in turn-of-the-century Boston.  She has presented papers and lecture recitals at national meetings of the Society for American Music, the College Music Society, and the American Matthay Association.  Her research interests are American art song, the concert tradition in African American music, and American opera and musical theater.  She appears as pianist on three compact discs of African-American song for Albany Records:  Fi-yer! and Swing Along:  The Songs of Will Marion Cook with tenor William Brown, and Deep River with bass Oral Moses.  She is presently editor of the College Music Society Newsletter.