Kori Bond

Kori Bond, professor of music at Idaho State University, coordinates the piano program, gives piano lessons, teaches related classes, and oversees the piano preparatory division, a position she has held since 1999. She is also a frequent performer, clinician, and adjudicator in the western U.S.

Kori was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, the second of three daughters of Robert and Georgene Thompson Bond. She was raised in a home and extended family where music was an important activity. All three daughters started piano lessons at an early age, Kori starting at age six with Florence Brinton in Salt Lake City. She continued piano study through completion of a doctorate, with Edward Auer, Donald Walker, Leonard Richter, and Debra Richter, now Bakland.

She completed B.A and B.S. degrees with honors in music, biology, and religion at Walla Walla College, now University, in 1992. While at WWC, when she was a student of Leonard Richter, she won the Idaho-Washington Symphony Concerto Competition and performed the Samuel Barber Piano Concerto with that orchestra in 1991.

She also was winner of the state and Northwest region Music Teachers National Association Wurlitzer competitions in 1992 and was one of seven to participate in the national MTNA competition in New York City.

Bond then pursued graduate study under Donald Walker at Northern Illinois University, where she completed an M.Mus. in piano performance in 1994, and at Indiana University with Edward Auer, where she completed a doctorate in piano performance in 1999. She also pursued extensive study in chamber music, working with Gyorgy Sebok, Leonard Hokanson, members of the Vermeer Quartet, and faculty members at the Sarasota Music Festival.

Bond frequently gives solo and collaborative concerts on university campuses and recital series throughout the West. She appears frequently with clarinetist Shandra Helman, soprano Diana Livingston Friedley, and other ISU colleagues and with university ensembles.

She has played numerous concertos with several different orchestras, most recently Prokofiev's Concerto No.3 in C with the Idaho State Civic Symphony, and has performed with esteemed artists such as soprano Diane Ragains, violinist Corey Cerovsek, flutist Christina Jennings, violist Roland Glassl, and others. She often gives recitals with her sister, Karlyn, a pianist who chairs the music department and is a member of the honors faculty at Westminster College in Salt Lake City.

Bond's performance of the complete 24 Preludes and Fugues by Dmitri Shostakovich was released on the Centaur Record label in 2007. James Leonard, music critic for ALLMUSIC, praised her ability to meet the technical playing challenges without “dropping a note,” while doing so with “immense musicality.”

ds/2012

Sources: Program notes, 2005 joint recital with her sister, Walla Walla University; 1991, 1992 issues of Opus, WWC music department newsletter; Idaho State University department of music website biography, 2012; Email, 8 March 2012; ALLMUSIC website; Personal Knowledge.