Thomas Rosenkranz

​​​​Thomas Rosenkranz has charted a career that breaks through the conventional notion of what a classical pianist is. Equally at home with the standard repertoire to the most recent developments in contemporary music and improvisation, he has established himself as one of the most forward looking pianists of his generation. He currently serves as Professor of Piano and Keyboard Area Coordinator at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) and as Visiting Professor of Piano at the Sichuan Conservatory of Music in China.  

Since being named a recipient of the Classical Fellowship Award from the American Pianists Association, he has performed throughout the world with recent festival performances at the Lincoln Center Arts Festival, ProPiano (Greece), Amalfi Coast Festival (Italy),  Rivello (Italy), Shanghai New Music Festival (China) and the Carthage International Festival (Tunisia) among others. He has been a soloist with the Indianapolis Symphony, Beirut National Orchestra, Seattle Chamber Orchestra and was the featured soloist with the Oberlin Orchestra’s groundbreaking tour of China.

He has twice served as a Cultural Ambassador on behalf of the United States Department of State traveling to the Middle East and North Africa promoting diplomacy through artistic collaboration. In 2022, He was named a Senior Fulbright Scholar to Taiwan where he served as artist-in-residence at Tunghai University in Taichung. In recent seasons he has toured some of the most monumental works in the piano repertoire including Frederic Rzewski’s The People United Will Never Be Defeated!, Charles Ives’s Concord Sonata, J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations and Olivier Messiaen’s Vingt regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus.

In addition to his performance career, he is also a celebrated artist-teacher. He has been presented in residencies and master classes at some of the world’s most prestigious institutions including the Shanghai, Shenyang, Tianjin, Xi’an, Xinghai, and Zhejiang conservatories as well as the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts, New York University and Princeton University.   Since 2006 he has served as a summer faculty member at the ​soundSCAPE Festival (Italy/Switzerland).

 He studied with Robert Shannon at the Oberlin Conservatory (B.M.) and at the Eastman School of Music (M.M. and D.M.A.) where He studied with and was teaching assistant to Nelita True. On behalf of the Presser Foundation for Music, he worked with Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen in Paris as one of her last students.

 In 2023, Rosenkranz was awarded the Kauffman Excellence in Research/Creative Activity Award from the UMKC Conservatory in recognition of his artistic achievements in the field of music.