Carla Davis Cash
Email: carla.d.cash@ttu.edu
Phone: (806) 834-3924
Office: School of Music, Room 236

Carla Davis Cash is Professor of Piano Pedagogy at Texas Tech University where she
teaches graduate courses in music pedagogy and supervises keyboard-area graduate part-time
instructors. She served for many years as Chair of the Keyboard Area and as Associate
Director for Applied Studies and Faculty Affairs for the School of Music from 2022
to 2025.
Cash's research primarily centers on the processes through which novice and expert
musicians learn and refine motor skills. She has also studied the impact of music
learning on various populations. Cash 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, including Journal of Research in Music Education, Psychology of Music, American Suzuki Journal, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, and the MTNA e-Journal.
In recognition of her scholarly contributions, Cash has received the Outstanding Service
Recognition Award from the Frances Clark Center for Keyboard Pedagogy (2023), the
Texas Tech University Chancellor's Council Distinguished Research Award (2015), and
the Outstanding Research Award from the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy (NCKP)
(2007, 2009). She has been awarded an Arts in Medicine Grant from the Talkington College
of Visual and Performing Arts (2018), several Texas Tech Scholarship Catalyst Program
grants, the Schovanec Teaching Development Scholarship (2021), and the inaugural Texas
Tech Seed Grant for Interdisciplinary Research (2016), subsequently utilized to investigate
the neural basis of skill learning in music using fMRI technology. In 2021, Cash was
inducted into the Texas Tech Teaching Academy and she was named a TTU Integrated Scholar
in 2025.
Professional activities include serving on the editorial boards of the Journal for Piano Research (2023-) and MTNA e-Journal (2021-2023) as well as on editorial and research committees for Texas Music Educators
Association (TMEA) and the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy (NCKP). Carla also
continues to perform, when time allows, with colleagues on stages across the U.S.
and beyond.
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.
School of Music
-
Address
18th and Boston Avenue Box 42033, Lubbock TX 79409-2033 -
Phone
806.742.2274 | Fax: 806.742.2294 -
Email
schoolofmusic@ttu.edu