David Karp
Professor of Piano, Co-chair of Keyboard Dept.
David Karp, nationally known pianist, composer, educator, lecturer, and author, holds degrees from the Manhattan School of Music and the University of Colorado. Dr. Karp is Professor of Music and director of the National Piano Institute for Teachers and Young Artists at the Meadows School of the Arts. He teaches courses in piano performance, composition, theory and aural skills, improvisation, and class piano techniques for the college teacher. His former students are now professionally engaged on college campuses throughout the United States. He has performed, lectured, and conducted workshops and seminars at many colleges and universities from Alaska to New Hampshire and as far away as Taiwan.
Alfred Publishing Co., Carl Fischer, Inc., FJH Music, Lee Roberts Music Publications, and Shawnee Press publish Dr. Karp’s compositions and collections. Dr. Maurice Hinson, professor of music at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, writes, “…a composer of inexhaustible imagination and energy with an amazing insight into what students enjoy playing. Karp has made a significant contribution to the musical awakening of countless young people.” Dr. Karp has received numerous commissions from music teachers' organizations. His piano compositions for students include over three hundred solos and duets and more than fifty collections. Collaborating with his wife, Renee Karp, they have authored six piano books on Hebrew and Jewish music.
In 1993, Dr. Karp was honored with the establishment of the David Karp Piano Festival, an annual event held at Kilgore College in Kilgore, Texas, in which over two hundred students perform and are judged on Karp compositions. Dr. Karp serves as a judge for the NGPT Composition Contest. He has conducted piano ensemble camps for junior and senior high school students at Plymouth State College in Plymouth, New Hampshire, and for the All Ohio Piano Ensemble, judged the Van Cliburn Piano Competition for Amateurs, given a lecture-recital at the Cliburn Institute (2002) and presented a workshop at TMTA (2003). Dr. Karp was guest artist and clinician as well as commissioned composer for the South Dakota MTA State Convention in October 1999 and for North Dakota MTA in 2001. He recently performed and recorded Simon Sargon’s Divertimento for Piano and Chamber Orchestra (Gasparo Records), which was released in spring 2003. The Voices of Change new music ensemble honored Dr. Karp at its 2006 Spring Gala Benefit for his lifetime participation in and promotion of new music composition, teaching and performance. He also performed Normand Lockwood’s Fantasia, a five movement work dedicated to Dr. Karp, at the Voices of Change concert in 2006. In November 2009, Dr. Karp’s latest commissioned composition, Homesick, for voice, piano, flute and cello, was performed at the National Holocaust Survivors Conference at SMU. When not teaching, Dr. Karp enjoys spending time at his cottage in Maine, practicing and composing, reading books, listening to music and playing tennis. Dr. and Mrs. Karp have three married children and seven grandchildren.
Teaching
Piano