Michael Krikorian
Professor, Piano and Technology Department
California State University, Fresno
DMA, University of Southern California
Praised for his “intensity and precision” (Hye Sharzhoom) and hailed as a “star pianist” (Donald Munro, The Munro Review), Dr. Michael Krikorian is a Los Angeles-based pianist, composer, and music educator. 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 both a performer and teacher, Dr. Krikorian maintains a large studio of private students in Los Angeles, CA, and will serve as an Artist Faculty in piano this summer in the Concordia Summer Chamber Music Camp at Concordia University in Irvine, CA. During his studies at USC Thornton he also taught group and private piano as a Graduate Teaching Assistant. In 2017, he was honored with the Award for Excellence in Teaching for Graduate Keyboard Studies Teaching Assistants. Dr. Krikorian is an active member of the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA), serving as VP of Conferences for the California Association of Professional Music Teachers (CAPMT), the Chair of the Young Professional Leadership Network (YPLN), and as the South Regional Chair for the CAPMT Concerto Competition. He has been invited to present at the MTNA National Conference, the CAPMT State Conference, and the MTNA Collegiate Chapters Piano Pedagogy Symposium.
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). 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).