Keenan Reesor

Dr. Keenan A. Reesor is a professor, pianist, and musicologist equally at home in the classroom, concert hall, and archive. Of his pre-concert lecture and ensuing performance of Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto with the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra, the South Coast Today reported that he displayed “depth and erudition . . . and the down-to-earth humility and warmth that later infused his brilliant technical mastery of the piano with soul force and heart.”

As a scholar, Dr. Reesor works primarily in Russian classical music of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with specialization in the music and reception of composer, conductor, and pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff. He has conducted research at the Library of Congress, the British Library, and the Russian National Museum of Music, and his work has been published by the Rachmaninoff Estate-Museum “Ivanovka” and the Gnesin Russian Academy of Music. He presents regularly at musicological conferences both at home and abroad. In February 2023, he appeared at the historic Greystone Mansion & Gardens in Beverly Hills as a featured lecturer and performer for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s “Rachmaninoff Was Here” festival, which celebrated the composer’s time in Los Angeles.

As a pianist, Dr. Reesor has offered numerous solo and concerto performances across the United States and beyond, not only in New Bedford but also with the symphony orchestras of Cheyenne and Fort Collins, and at such venues as the Duke’s Hall in London, Sunnylands, and Salt Lake City’s Kingsbury Hall. An avid chamber musician, he has also appeared in recital with tenor Stanford Olsen, violinist William Hagen, and members of the Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. Dr. Reesor is a laureate of the Palm Springs International Piano Competition and a former nominee for the American Pianists Association Classical Fellow Award.

Dr. Reesor is a passionate teacher with an insatiable curiosity about music, and he currently serves as Assistant Professor of Musicology at Brigham Young University. He served previously as Associate Professor of Music and Director of Keyboard Studies at Southern Virginia University, where he was named Phi Kappa Phi Professor of the Year. He received graduate degrees in musicology and piano from the University of Southern California, studying under Bryan Simms and Norman Krieger, respectively. A native Utahan, Dr. Reesor is also an alumnus of Utah State University, where he studied with the late Gary Amano, and he served a proselytizing mission in Russia for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He and his violinist-wife, Nonie, are the proud parents of five boys.