Keenan Reesor is a pianist and musicologist with a growing reputation for connecting with audiences in both capacities. 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.”
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, among others. Recent appearances include solo performances at the Dixie State University Castle Rock Music Camp and Utah State University Summer Piano Festival and collaborative recitals with tenor Stanford Olsen, 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, which he is in the process of developing 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 Russian National Museum of Music, the Moscow Conservatory, and the St. Petersburg Philharmonia. His research has been published 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 five boys.
Those who wish to obtain a more complete summary of Dr. Reesor’s professional activities can view and download his current curriculum vitae here.
This site’s cover photo, which shows Reesor at the intersection of Bersenevskii Pereulok and Bolotnaia Naberezhnaia in Moscow, was taken by Li Mengeden in November 2015.
Keenan Reesor 