ARTISTS’ PROFILES

KEVIN COLE Piano/Host

“America’s Pianist” Kevin Cole has delighted audiences with a repertoire that includes the best of American Music. Cole’s performances have prompted accolades from some of the foremost critics in America. “A piano genius...he reveals an understanding of harmony, rhythmic complexity and pure show-biz virtuosity that would have had Vladimir Horowitz smiling with envy,” wrote critic Andrew Patner. On Cole’s affinity for Gershwin: “When Cole sits down at the piano, you would swear Gershwin himself was at work… Cole stands as the best Gershwin pianist in America today,” Howard Reich, arts critic for the Chicago Tribune

Kevin Cole is an award-winning musical director, arranger, composer, vocalist and archivist who garnered the praises of Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen, E.Y. Harburg, Hugh Martin, Burton Lane, Marvin Hamlisch, Stephen Sondheim and members of the Jerome Kern and Gershwin families.

Kevin has given Master Classes in musical theatre vocal performance at Interlochen Center for the Arts, North Carolina School of the Arts and was Guest Artist-In-Residence at Saginaw Valley State University.

He has served as Musical Director for Pasadena Playhouse, Michigan Ensemble Theatre, San Francisco Shakespeare Festival Royal George Theatre (Chicago) and the New York Musical Theatre Festival.

The Performance History document and the Discography show plenty of evidence I spent more than 35 years making my living as a singer. Most of those 35 years were spent working at the very highest level of the classical music business: The Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra—at Ravinia and on Michigan Avenue, the Salzburg Festival and the Philharmonics of Vienna and Berlin.

There were life-changing experiences at Opera Theater of St. Louis, the Indianapolis Symphony, the Atlanta Symphony, and Carnegie Hall. I got to sing a recital at the Supreme Court, by special invitation from Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, and sing with the Vienna Philharmonic at the Vatican for Pope John Paul II’s 80th birthday.

Riding the wave of the CD boom, I made a lot of recordings in the 1980s and ‘90s. Works by Bach, Handel, Mozart (lots of Mozart), Beethoven, Brahms and Mahler. I was nominated for the Grammy award five times and won twice!