Louise Costigan-Kerns

Louise Costigan-Kerns has performed internationally as a concert pianist, accompanist, and conductor. Her concerts have been reviewed as “inspiring and technically amazing performances”. After earning her Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees, Pi Kappa Lambda, from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, she was a member of the piano faculty of the New England Conservatory of Music Preparatory School.

Ms. Costigan-Kerns began studying the piano at age two-and-a-half with her mother, Beatrice Costigan, in Blairmore, Alberta, Canada. At age five, she gave her first public recital and began competing in Alberta Music Festivals, where she was a consistent winner through high school. Ms. Costigan-Kerns attended the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, where she received her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees. She was on the faculty of the New England Conservatory Preparatory School and was the Founding Director of the New England Conservatory Extension Division Opera Studio. She studied piano with Irma Wolpe and Victor Rosenbaum, opera with John Moriarty and Boris Goldovsky, and art song repertoire with Allen Rogers.

Ms. Costigan-Kerns maintained an active performing career in the Boston area as a solo pianist and accompanist. Over the years, she was a member of the Opera Institute faculty at Boston University and the piano faculty at Phillips Exeter Academy, as well as servings as Artist in Residence at Brandeis University.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, Ms. Costigan-Kerns has worked for Opera San José, Stanford University, and the San Francisco Symphony. She is a lecturer in piano at Stanford University’s Department of Music and a voice/opera coach and recital pianist at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Ms. Costigan-Kerns is active as a recital pianist, opera coach, and accompanist for singers and instrumentalists. Her Bay Area performances with orchestra include the Lou Harrison Piano Concerto with the Redwood Symphony, Liszt Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Winchester Orchestra, Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Palo Alto Philharmonic, Saint-Saëns Carnival of the Animals with the Santa Cruz Symphony, and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 with the New Millennium Chamber orchestra. Ms. Costigan-Kerns recently music-directed Ravel’s L’heure espagnole and Poulenc’s La voix humaine for Opera Academy of California San Francisco, with whom she has also performed Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites and Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro.

Ms. Costigan-Kerns’ first solo piano CD, My Favorite Performances, was released in 2004. Piano With Passion, her second CD, was released in 2007, and Into the Light, her third CD, was released in 2011. (All three are available on iTunes.) You can also stream her music on Spotify. She can be seen performing Chopin, Liszt, Debussy, and Harrison on YouTube.