Sean Kennard
| Sean Kennard | |
|---|---|
| Born |
October 3, 1984 San Diego, California, U.S. |
| Genres | Classical |
| Occupation(s) | Pianist |
| Instruments | Piano |
| Years active | fl. ca. 1995-present |
| Website | www |
Sean Eric Kennard (born October 3, 1984) is an American classical pianist.
Sean Kennard was born in San Diego, California to an American father and Japanese mother. He grew up in Hawaii and his family moved to Philadelphia when he began studying at the Curtis Institute of Music, at age 13.
Kennard began lessons at the Ellen Masaki School of Music on his tenth birthday, October 3, 1994 in Honolulu, Hawaii, and began studies with Ellen Masaki on January 5, 1995. In the summer of that year he gave his first public solo performance in Honolulu. He performed in Carnegie Hall on May 18, 1996 as part of the Hawaii Music Awards, and travelled back to Honolulu the next day to place first in the final round of the International Chopin Competition of the Pacific. He performed recitals in Poland in 1997 at the and Żelazowa Wola (Chopin's birthplace). On October 3, 1997, the third anniversary of beginning piano studies, he performed a recital of Chopin's Études Op. 10 and 25 at the Academy of Arts in Honolulu.
Kennard received his bachelor of music degree from the Curtis Institute of Music in 2004. He began studies at Curtis with Eleanor Sokoloff in 1998, and was the first student from the state of Hawaii ever to be accepted to the institution. In his final year, he was awarded the piano department's Sergei Rachmaninoff Award, given to one graduating pianist each year. During his time at Curtis, he won 2nd prize at the Hilton Head International Piano Competition. Immediately after graduating, he competed in the Sendai International Music Competition, and was the first American and contestant outside of Asia and Europe to win a prize in the competition. He went on from Curtis to study with Enrique Graf at the College of Charleston in their Artist Certificate program in Fall of 2004. In 2012 he graduated with a Master of Music from the Juilliard School, studying with Jerome Lowenthal and Robert McDonald, before entering the Professional Studies Diploma program at Mannes College later that year to study with Richard Goode. He was accepted into the Doctor of Musical Arts program at the Yale School of Music in the studio of Boris Berman in 2014, and completed the residential portion of the degree in the Spring of 2016.
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