Faculty Artist Series: Cole Burger, piano

Cole Burger has performed at venues including Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall, Rome’s Teatro di Marcello, the Romanian Athenaeum in Bucharest, the Goethe Institute in Bangkok, the American Cathedral in Paris, and the United States Ambassador’s Home in Malaysia. He has won prizes in the Northern Lights Piano Competition, American Protégé International Piano and Strings Competition, Seattle International Piano Competition, and the American Prize in Piano Performance. He has also organized and performed in benefit recitals for non-profit organizations that have raised more than $60,000. The American Record Guide called his playing “both extraordinarily strong and achingly tender” in his solo CD Beyond the Traveler: Piano Music by Composers from Arkansas. He has also recorded music composed with generative AI, available on YouTube.

Dr. Burger teaches piano and related subjects at Bowling Green State University, Lutheran Summer Music, and previously served for twelve summers on the faculty at Camp Encore/Coda. He taught applied piano as a guest professor at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, while a member of the Fulbright Specialist Roster, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. He has written articles on demographics in academia, piano music by women, collaborative work in collegiate group piano, summer music camps, and the piano music of Olivier Messiaen. He is also the author of the textbook Keyboard Skills for the Practical Musician, published by Routledge. He holds degrees in piano performance and economics from Northwestern University and the University of Texas.