Musicians

Patrick Johnson

Keyboard

Principal

Sponsor: Sam & Jean Holland

Patrick Johnson is an active solo and collaborative pianist. An avid orchestral musician, he is principal pianist for the Lansing Symphony Orchestra, the Jackson Symphony Orchestra, and the Michigan Philharmonic, and he regularly performs on chamber-music series throughout the Midwest. He has appeared with the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble and the ConTempus Initiative contemporary-music ensemble and has been the featured soloist with the Michigan Philharmonic on several occasions. 

Johnson is on the faculty of the Michigan State University College of Music where he teaches courses in music theory and piano literature. In 2018, he received the Dortha J. and John D. Withrow Award for Excellence in Teaching from the MSU College of Music. His research interests include music theory pedagogy, and he contributed a chapter to the award-winning Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy. 

He has performed two-piano accompaniment on dozens of recordings of American operettas and early musicals, including works by Jerome Kern and nearly all of Victor Herbert’s 43 operettas, many of which had never before been recorded. Most of these recordings have been released by the Comic Opera Guild of Ann Arbor and have been cataloged in the Library of Congress.  

Johnson is a graduate of the University of Michigan and Michigan State University and holds degrees in piano performance and music theory.