Carla Davis Cash

Carla Davis Cash is Associate Professor of Piano Pedagogy at Texas Tech University where she serves as chair of the keyboard area, teaches courses in pedagogy, supervises keyboard-area instructional TAs, and coordinates the undergraduate class piano program.

For over a decade, her body of research has centered on the processes by which novice and expert musicians learn and refine motor skills. She regularly presents her work at state, national, and international conferences of music performance, education, and psychology, and her articles can be found in leading journals and trade magazines of music education and music psychology.

In recognition of her contributions to the field of music learning, she received the Texas Tech University Chancellor's Council Distinguished Research Award in 2015 as well as the Outstanding Research Award from the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy (NCKP) in 2007 and 2009. She has been awarded grant funding for several projects by Texas Tech's Scholarship Catalyst Program and an Arts in Medicine Grant from the Talkington College of Visual and Performing Arts. In 2016, Dr. Cash and her interdisciplinary team of colleagues in music, cognitive psychology, and mechanical engineering were one of four research groups to receive the inaugural TTU Seed Grant for Interdisciplinary Research, subsequently utilized to investigate the neural basis of skill learning in music using fMRI technology.

Professional activities include serving on Scholarship, Research, and Pedagogy Selection Committee for the 2020 College Music Society (CMS) National Conference. She is a member of the Research and Editorial Committees of Texas Music Educators Association (TMEA) and the Research Committee of the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy (NCKP), which she previously co-chaired for several years. Carla performs regularly as a collaborative pianist, joining colleagues on stages across the U.S. and beyond. She also maintains a small private studio in Lubbock, TX.

A native of Miami, Florida, she earned a B.M. in Keyboard Performance and M.M. in Keyboard Performance and Pedagogy from the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami, and holds a Ph.D. in Music and Human Learning from The University of Texas at Austin.