Masterclass: Dr. Keenan Reesor, Piano

Dr. Keenan Reesor Biography

Keenan Reesor is a pianist and musicologist with a reputation for his ability to connect with audiences in both capacities. Of his pre-concert lecture and ensuing performance of Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto with the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra in 2013, 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.”

Reesor has performed across the United States and in England, Austria, Hungary, and Russia. In addition to the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra, he has appeared with the Cheyenne Symphony Orchestra, the Coachella Valley Symphony, the Downey Symphony Orchestra, and the Fort Collins Symphony. Recent appearances include a solo recital at Dixie State University’s Castle Rock Music Camp, where he served as guest clinician, and in chamber recital with violinist William Hagen and cellist Alice Yoo. He is a laureate of the Virginia Waring International Piano Competition, has been nominated for the American Pianists Association Classical Fellow Award, and has been heard on KUSC-FM Los Angeles.

As a scholar, Reesor specializes in the music and reception of Sergei Rachmaninoff, with broader interests in reception history, canonicity, and Russian music and musicians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His dissertation, “Rachmaninoff in Music Lexicons, 1900–2013,” offers a conceptual introduction to the composer’s international critical reception, and he is in the process of developing his continuing research on this subject into a full monograph. Reesor’s research has taken him to archives at the Library of Congress, the British Library, the Royal Academy of Music, the Glinka State Museum of Musical Culture in Moscow, the Moscow Conservatory, and the St. Petersburg Philharmonia. Last December, Reesor’s article “Rachmaninoff as Émigré: Man, Music, and Reception, 1918–1943” was published in a collection by Rachmaninoff’s Estate-Museum “Ivanovka” in Tambov, Russia.

Reesor is an assistant professor of music teaching piano and music history at Southern Virginia University, a liberal-arts university aligned with the values of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains at the southern end of the Shenandoah Valley. He taught courses previously at the University of Southern California, San Diego State University, and Utah State University. At USC he also offered regular private lessons to pianists at all degree levels from 2010 to 2016 as a designated studio teaching assistant. He holds a PhD in musicology and a master’s in piano from USC and a bachelor’s in piano from USU. He lives in Buena Vista, Virginia, with his wife, Nonie, and their four boys.

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