Dr. Kevin Olson

TEACHING ARTIST

 https://music.usu.edu/faculty/directory/olson

KEVIN OLSON is an active pianist, composer, and member of the piano faculty at Utah State University, where he has taught courses in piano literature, pedagogy, collaborative piano, music theory, aural skills, and others. In addition to his collegiate teaching responsibilities, Kevin coordinates the piano program at Utah State University, and oversees the Utah State University Youth Conservatory, which provides weekly group and private piano instruction to more than 200 pre-college community students. The National Association of Schools of Music has recently recognized the Conservatory as a model for pre-college piano instruction programs. Before teaching at Utah State, he was on the faculty at Elmhurst College near Chicago and Humboldt State University in northern California.
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A native of Utah, Kevin began composing at age five. When he was twelve, his composition, An American Trainride, received the Overall First Prize at the 1983 National PTA Convention at Albuquerque, New Mexico. Since then he has been a Composer in Residence at the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy, and has written music commissioned and performed by groups such as the Five Browns, American Piano Quartet, American Festival Choir and Orchestra, Chicago a cappella, the Rich Matteson Jazz Festival, Music Teachers National Association, and several piano teacher associations around the country. He gives workshops and performances nationally and internationally, most recently in India, China, Canada, and Great Britain.

Kevin maintains a large piano studio, teaching students of a variety of ages and abilities. Many of the needs of his own piano students have inspired hundreds of books and solos published by the FJH Music Company, which he joined as a writer in 1994.

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Dr. Olson inspires students at the 2017 Festival for Creative Pianists adjudications: