Solo and collaborative pianist Christopher Koelzer hails from the San Francisco Bay Area and maintains an active performing, recording, and coaching career in the New York City and Washington, D.C. metropolitan areas. He earned his Bachelor’s in Piano Performance from Brigham Young University, studying with Dr. Irene Peery-Fox, and holds a Doctor of Musical Arts and Master of Music in Collaborative Piano from the University of Maryland, College Park, where he studied with Professor Rita Sloan.
Christopher attended the Aspen Music Festival and School as a Vocal Fellow from 2011–2014 and has served as advisor, coach, and performer in numerous programs, including the Rural Artists Project in western Alaska (2014) and as Coaching Fellow at Wolf Trap Opera (2017). He joined the Merola Opera Program in 2019 as Apprentice Coach, premiering Jake Heggie’s If I Were You.
He has worked as assistant conductor and vocal coach with opera companies including Washington National Opera, Wolf Trap Opera, Northern Lights Music Festival, and Maryland Lyric Opera, and coached and performed with the Maryland Opera Studio (2013–2020). Christopher was selected for the Washington National Opera’s Cafritz Young Artist Program as pianist and coach (2017–2019).
An advocate for new music, he has performed and recorded world premieres in New York City (Hometown to the World, Kaminsky/Reed) and D.C. (Proving Up, Mazzoli/Vavrek), and was nominated for a 2019 Grammy® Award for his work on the album Ruggles, Stucky & Harbison: Orchestral Works with conductor David Alan Miller. He has appeared at Carnegie Hall as both pianist (Blake Allen’s Insomnia, 2022) and organist (Dan Forrest’s Requiem for the Living, 2022/23; Fauré’s Requiem, 2023).
Currently, Christopher teaches Collaborative Piano and Operetta Workshop, and serves as conductor, vocal coach, and accompanist at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Arts and Performing Arts, where he conducted the 2023 production of The Addams Family.
