Michael Coonrod- Piano
Interlochen Center for the Arts
MICHAEL COONROD has been a piano faculty member at the Interlochen Arts Academy for forty 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 twenty 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 2011, he appeared at the Qingdao Conservatory of Music in China as soloist, and then as a chamber recitalist with his wife Jean and colleagues David and Joan Holland. They gave several master classes for the students at the university and community.
As soloist with orchestra, Dr. Coonrod performed Beethoven's Concerto No.4 with the Traverse Symphony Orchestra, Mozart's Concerto No. 14 with the Louisville String Orchestra, and Mozart’s
two-piano concerto with the Interlochen Arts Academy Orchestra in 2010. In the fall of 2012, he joined the Northwestern Michigan College Community Band in Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. He has also performed for the American Liszt Society, the Eastman School of Music, the Michigan Music Teachers Association conventions, and in June of 2008 at the International Viola Congress. This summer, he will teach and perform at the Amalfi Coast Music & Arts Festival in Miaori, Italy.
His compact disc of music by the Michigan composer ALBERT FILLMORE was released in December of 2003 as a non-profit venture to build scholarships for composition students in Michigan. As an anthology of works for solo piano, voice, children's choir, and string orchestra with organ, this biography and recording includes six other artists from Michigan, Indiana, and Kentucky. His most recent recording is a two-CD set of solo piano music by Franz Schubert, which is available through CDbaby.com
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 and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees 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.
For eighteen summers, Dr. Coonrod was resident piano artist for "Music at Maple Mount, a Summer Institute for Young Musicians." In 1996, he was included by the Governor of Kentucky in the order of "Kentucky Colonels" for his outstanding contribution to education.
He is married to cellist Jean Merce Coonrod. They have three grown children: David, a landscaper with two children, Michelline, a professional dancer with son Michael in Las Vegas, and Robert, a guitarist and song writer.