Wideman
Board Members

John Frazier, President
Sally Gardner, Treasurer
Laura Butler, Secretary
Anita Berg
Sam Gregorio
Laurie Lyons
Jerard Martin, M. D.
Margaret Shehee
Grace Bareikis, Ed. D.

Alon Goldstein

Artistic Director

Alon Goldstein has played with all of the major orchestras in the United States, as well as the London Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic, and Radio France Orchestra. Mr. Goldstein was recently honored with the "Society of Scholars" award given to him by his alma mater, the Johns Hopkins University.

He serves as the artistic director for the Distinguished Artists Concert and Lecture Series in Santa Cruz, CA; the artistic director of the Mt. Angel Abbey Bach Festival in Oregon, and artistic director of the Wideman International Piano Competition in Shreveport. He was named a "Performer Fellow" at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, and served as an artist in residence at the "Theo Lieven" piano academy in Como, Italy. He currently holds the position of Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Missouri in Kansas City.

Nena Plant Wideman

Founder

Nena Plant Wideman's energy, expertise, and engaging personality captured the hearts of all who knew her.

From 1940 to 1984, her impact on the musical life of Shreveport was unparalleled. She taught hundreds of young pianists as a member of the piano faculty at Centenary College as well as in her private piano studio. She served in leadership roles with the Shreveport Symphony Society, helping to select John Shenaut as its first musical director and actively participating as a member of other committees and positions of the Symphony board.

Her commitment to providing performance opportunities for her students resulted in the establishment of a concerto competition in 1950, which she managed and supported for over 30 years. Guest conductors and judges were brought in from throughout the United States for the competition featuring the Shreveport Symphony Orchestra and five pianists, each playing a movement of an assigned symphony. Originally named the Piano Concerto Contest and once including strings and voice, it was in 1981 that the SSO initiated the competition title change to the Nena Plant Wideman International Piano Competition to honor its founder and 'guiding spirit.‘

Born in Doyline in 1905 where she received her early music training, Nena continued her education at Louisiana State Normal College - now Northwestern State University. Her first teaching position was in Homer in 1926 where she married Yandell Wideman and began a family. After the death of her husband in 1937, she made her way to Chicago to study at Chicago Musical College, later returning to Shreveport to teach at Centenary and to open the Wideman School of Music. A working, single mother; a busy piano instructor, and active supporter of the arts for some 47 years, Nena's legacy - The Nena Plant Wideman International Piano Competition — stands as a lasting tribute to one of Shreveport's most remarkable women.

Lester Senter Wilson

Past Executive Director (1985-2020)

A native of Shreveport, Dr. Lester Senter Wilson was a graduate of Byrd High School and star pupil of Nena Plant Wideman. Lester went on to study at LSU where she graduated in both piano and voice. Not content to stop there, she went on to earn her Doctorate of Musical Arts in both piano and voice at the University of Texas-Austin, the first DMA ever awarded there.

As talented as she was in piano, she was an equally talented mezzo-soprano who went on to build her career in voice with a repertoire of over 60 roles, appearing with leading opera companies, festivals and symphonies across America, Europe and Mexico. She appeared in both opera and musical theater in Shreveport, including Shreveport Opera and at Centenary's Marjorie Lyons Playhouse. In Mississippi, where she and her husband, the late Richard Baxter Wilson, Jr., lived, she became a driving force in the Mississippi Opera scene. In 2001, Lester was the recipient of the Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts, presented by the Mississippi Arts Commission.

At Nena Plant Wideman's death in 1984, Lester became the executive director of the Nena Plant Wideman International Piano Competition and guided it to the present. During her 36-year-tenure, she built it into a competition sought after by students from all over the world at all of the most prestigious colleges, universities, and conservatories in North America.

Having no children of her own, she mentored, advised, even good-naturedly cajoled thousands of contestants, much as a mother would, in the art of building their own careers, telling them what to wear, how to appear on stage, how to acknowledge applause, and how to look after the business of becoming an artist.

For the Gold Medalists, she traveled with them to engagements she had secured for them as a part of their prize. Lester was tireless in the pursuit of excellence, and her often-heard mantra was "Onward and Upward!"