Full Biography

Karen Burgman has performed coast to coast in the US, Canada, and Europe as a solo and collaborative pianist.  She has performed in notable venues such as Carnegie Hall, Jordan Hall, The National Gallery of Art, and the Toronto Center for the Performing Arts where she premiered a work commissioned in her honor. A graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory, she has won numerous prizes for her collaborative piano playing.  Cleveland Classical praised her in 2011 for her “mastery of the complicated runs and arpeggios and a percussive clarity that grounded the whole performance in (to borrow Wallace Stevens' phrase) ‘lucid, inescapable rhythms.’”

Karen is the founding pianist of the nationally touring Credo Trio, and a faculty member of the Credo Chamber Music Festival held in Oberlin, OH.   Her recent collaborative performances have brought her to the stage with such artists as Stephen Clapp (Dean Emeritus of Juilliard), Peter Slowik (violist, Oberlin Conservatory), Caroline Goulding (Grammy-nominated violinist), Jesus and Dara Morales (cellist, and violinist of the Philadelphia Orchestra), Alan Held (world renowned bass-baritone), John Haines-Eitzen (faculty cellist of Cornell University), and Elizabeth Pitcairn, (violinist of the "Red Violin").  She is scheduled to appear in Boston’s Symphony Hall this spring with legendary tenor Paul Sperry.  

Karen is also active as a choral conductor, piano teacher, composer/arranger and certified Dalcroze Eurhythmics instructor.  She is the artistic director for Sola Gratia Musicians choirs in Hatfield, PA, and she maintains a private teaching studio at the Hilltown Creative Arts Academy, both organizations she helped to found.

Her solo piano CDs are available through her own recording label, Lifespring Music.   Karen has also been recognized for her continued work in the area of music therapy and autism; she spent time studying an innovative approach to piano playing and autism in Warsaw, Poland in 2004.  Karen was also featured on Channel 10 NBC, in December 2005 in Philadelphia, performing on the touring “Red Piano.”   She has performed on early pianos at both the Finchcocks Estate Piano Collection in England and the Frederick Early Piano Collection in Massachusetts.  Her principal teachers and mentors include Sandra Carlock, Sanford Margolis, Stephen Moore, Peter Slowik, and James Howsmon.

Karen resides in the Philadelphia area with her husband and three daughters.

www.karenburgman.com