About
Praised for his “intensity and precision” (Hye Sharzhoom) and hailed as a “star pianist” (Donald Munro, The Munro Review), Dr. Michael Krikorian is a pianist, composer, scholar, and music educator currently serving as the Assistant Professor of Piano and Music Technology at California State University, Fresno. He has won top prizes in numerous competitions and given acclaimed performances across the United States as well as Italy, France, China, and South Korea. Some recent performance highlights include recitals at the Conservatoire de Lyon in France, and the Shanghai Oriental Art Center in China. Received by a “wildly appreciative audience” (Donald Munro, The Munro Review), his concert in the Philip Lorenz International Keyboard Concerts series was named one of the top 20 cultural events of 2019 in the Central San Joaquin Valley by The Munro Review. In 2018, he was a top prizewinner in the Los Angeles International Liszt Competition, including the prize for "best performance of an opera transcription or paraphrase". He earned his Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) degree in Piano Performance as a student of Antoinette Perry with additional minor fields in Music Theory and Analysis, Composition, and Scoring for Visual Media at the University of Southern California (USC) Thornton School of Music. Previously, he earned his M.M. from Manhattan School of Music as a student of Arkady Aronov, and his B.A. from CSU Fresno as a student of Andreas Werz.
In demand as an adjudicator, Dr. Krikorian has served on juries and panels for the Asia International Piano Academy and Festival (AIPAF) Competition, the Artciál International Piano Competition, the Music Teachers Association of California (MTAC), Music Teachers National Association (MTNA), and the California Association of Professional Music Teachers (CAPMT). Dr. Krikorian has served on the faculty of summer programs such as the Asia International Piano Academy and Festival in Cheonan, South Korea, the Concordia Summer Chamber Music Camp at Concordia University in Irvine, CA, and CSU Summer Arts. During his studies at USC Thornton, he taught group and private piano as a Graduate Teaching Assistant, and received the USC Award for Excellence in Teaching for Graduate Keyboard Studies Teaching Assistants. Dr. Krikorian currently serves as President-Elect for the California Association of Professional Music Teachers (CAPMT), and is a proud ambassador for the Royal Conservatory of Music (RCM). He has been invited to present at the MTNA National Conference, the CAPMT State Conference, the MTNA Collegiate Chapters Piano Pedagogy Symposium, and the 33rd Piano Symposium of the Ewon Music Festival in Cheonan, South Korea.
In addition to performing and teaching, Dr. Krikorian composes music for the concert stage and visual media. His original score for The Fidelio Incident (Act 3 Games), a video game based on Beethoven’s opera, Fidelio, has been praised as “brilliant” (Evan Dickens, Adventure Gamers), “powerful” (James Paley, COGconnected), and a soundtrack that “effectively conveys the mood” (Joe Juba, Gameinformer). He recently scored the short film Motel Room (Sethlan Productions, 2023) which has screened at festivals across the world, including the LA Shorts International Film Festival, the Valley Film Festival, the ARPA International Film Festival, and Louisville’s International Festival of Film. In July 2021, Dr. Krikorian taught as a guest artist in the CSU Summer Arts course titled The Art of Scoring for Video Games alongside Garry Schyman (Bioshock, Middle-Earth, Destroy All Humans!), Edouard Brenneisen (League of Legends), Jason Hayes (World of Warcraft, Starcraft), and Peter Scaturro (Senior Music Producer at Sony Interactive Entertainment).