Ken Noda

Ken Noda (born October 5, 1962) is an American concert pianist, accompanist, vocal coach, and composer. He began composing music and performing as a concert pianist before the age of 11. He has performed with symphony orchestras throughout the world, and has composed numerous art songs and five operas. He has worked as a vocal coach at the Metropolitan Opera since 1991, and is currently musical assistant to conductor James Levine.

Born to Japanese parents in Dobbs Ferry, New York, Noda grew up in Scarborough and was educated at the Hackley School (graduated 1980).

He began studying the piano at age five and was admitted into the Juilliard School on a full scholarship at the age of seven. He has studied piano privately with Daniel Barenboim, Adele Marcus, and Sylvia Rabinof. He studied singing with Beverley Peck Johnson, and for many years was her studio accompanist at Juilliard. In 1986 he was awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant worth $10,000 (equivalent to $21,849 in 2016).

Noda composed his first opera, The Canary and the Baseball, at the age of 10, a work which premiered at the Brevard Music Festival on August 18, 1973, and was later staged by the educational wing of the New York City Opera. At the age of 13 he was awarded a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts to compose a three-act opera, The Rivalry (1976), which was his third work in that genre. He has since composed two more operas: The Highwayman (1979) and The Magic Turtle (1980). By the time he was 16 years old he had composed 65 art songs.

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