Visiting artist Michael Coonrod to present solo piano recital at Goshen College
Concert: Michael Coonrod, piano
Date/Time: Friday, Oct. 24, 7:30 p.m.
Location: Goshen College Music Center’s Rieth Recital Hall
Tickets: $7 adults, $5 seniors/students, available at the door one hour before the concert. GC faculty/staff/students free with valid ID.
Visiting artist Michael Coonrod will present a solo piano recital in the Music Center’s Rieth Recital Hall on Friday, Oct. 24, 2014 at 7:30 p.m.
Coonrod, a faculty member at the Interlochen Arts Academy, will present a program of solo piano works by Johannes Brahams, Alexander Scriabin and Sergei Rachmaninoff. The program will include two piano works composed for the left hand alone, part of a unique subset of the classical piano repertoire that focuses on the so-called “weak hand” of many pianists.
Tickets are $7 for adults, $5 seniors/students. Goshen College faculty, staff and students are free with valid ID. Tickets available at the door beginning one hour before the concert.
Michael Coonrod has been a piano faculty member at the Interlochen Arts Academy for 39 years. During this time, he has developed the potential in hundreds of students and has presented annual piano recital tours devoted to music with a central concept, such as all-Schubert, Schumann, Bartók, Impressionistic, Russian and Spanish-Latin American programs. In 1994, he presented 20 concerts of music by contemporary American composers culminating in Poland, where he performed and gave master classes at the Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw and the Music Conservatory in Poznan. In August of 2009 and June of 2010, he appeared at the Qingdao Conservatory of Music in China as soloist and then as a chamber music recitalist. In 1996, governor of Kentucky included him in the order of “Kentucky Colonels” for his outstanding contribution to education.
His primary teacher and mentor was the Dutch pianist Lucien Hut, with whom he studied at the University of Montana, graduating with honors. He earned his master of music degree and doctor of musical arts degree at The Peabody Conservatory of Music, part of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. His principal teacher there was Konrad Wolff, biographer of Artur Schnabel, with additional coaching from George Walker and Leon Fleisher.