Dr. Aubrie Jacobson ’19

Rising Professional, Conservatory for the Performing Arts

Dr. Aubrie Jacobson earned her Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance. She continued at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, graduating with her Master of Music in Collaborative Piano from the Mead Witter School of Music in 2021. She then earned her Doctor of Musical Arts in Collaborative Piano and a Doctoral Minor in Arts Administration from the UW-Madison School of Music and the Bolz Center at the Wisconsin School of Business in 2024. 

She is the music assistant at Madison Opera, house pianist at Suzuki Strings of Madison, and church musician for Glenwood Moravian Church. 

Jacobson freelances as a collaborative pianist, working with professional musicians, UW-Madison students, and local high school students in a variety of settings, including recitals and lessons, studio classes, professional recordings, festivals, and competitions.  

She is the principal coach, rehearsal pianist, and orchestral pianist for Madison Opera’s world premiere production of Everlasting Faint, a new opera by Scott Gendel and Sandra Flores-Strand.  

Her nominator and piano instructor, Mary Ellen Haupert, shared that Jacobson earned a perfect 4.0 as an undergraduate honors student and in her graduate studies. She landed a graduate assistant position (with just two available) in collaborative piano at UW-Madison. 

As a Viterbo student, she was awarded the Outstanding Humanities Oral Presentation Award at the Seven Rivers Undergraduate Research Symposium. She presented her independent research project (programming recitals in the graduate school setting) at the International Keyboard Collaborative Arts Society Collabfest. 

She traveled to Finland with the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program to study the country’s history, music, and culture. That led to Jacobson presenting her first lecture recital at Viterbo University and at the Wisconsin Music Teachers Association Conference. “These experiences prepared me for my doctoral lecture recital and gave me the tools to succeed for conducting my doctoral scholarly research and then writing my dissertation.” 

Her piano instructor connected Jacobson to opportunities that strengthened her collaborative piano experience – from chamber music to opera arias and musical theatre repertoire. “I was part of a Viterbo Music Department opera,” she shared. 

Jacobson and her husband Evan Bonsall, a social studies teacher, live in Madison. They enjoy the outdoors, gardening, visiting farmers’ markets, attending concerts and recitals, and Forward Madison soccer games. Jacobson cherishes traveling to Marquette, Mich. to visit her parents, Mark and Jane, and their dog Brio.  

Read about the other 2025 Distinguished Alumni Award Recipients