Coco Bender, MA
Salem Community Music School Teacher
Coco Bender is a pianist from Eugene, Oregon. She has premiered solo piano and collaborative works by composers Christina Rusnak, Paul Safar, Dave Bender, and Oswald Huynh and tours the Pacific Northwest as a recitalist. She is a founding member of The Grapefruits piano and horn duo, with hornist Margarite Waddell, principal horn of the Eugene Symphony Orchestra. The Grapefruits regularly present commissioned original works along with classical horn and piano repertoire.
When she is not performing, Coco teaches a large studio of piano students from ages six to eighty-one! She loves helping students of all ages access their creativity and imagination through music and the piano. She teaches music theory, reading, improv, and well-coordinated whole-body playing of the piano.
Ms. Bender graduated in May 2026 with a Masters of Music in Piano Performance and Injury Preventive Technique from Salem College, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she studied with Dr. Barbara Lister-Sink. She received her Bachelor of Arts, cum laude, with a concentration in Piano Performance from Lewis & Clark College, Portland, Oregon, with Dr. Susan Dewitt Smith. Post-bachelor’s, Coco studied with Dr. Thomas Otten, who retrained her in the Lister-Sink Method. Additionally, she has taken master classes from Inna Faliks, Tamara Stefanovich, William Chapman Nayho, among others. Coco is a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
“Music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.”
– Leonard Bernstein