BIOGRAPHY

John Sullivan, based in Concord, MA, has been active in the Boston area as pianist, conductor, teacher, and coach for over twenty years.  His repertoire interests range from solo piano (centered on the Beethoven sonatas) to Italian opera (to which the Three Tenors introduced him at age three) to the Austro-German symphonic classics (Beethoven and Bruckner especially) to choral music (twenty years’ experience as a choral accompanist) to chamber music and Lieder.  He has extensive experience working as teacher and coach with all ages and ability levels: grade school, high school, college, and adults.  He considers it a privilege to be able to pass on an appreciation for and understanding of the masterpieces of the great composers.
 
Mr. Sullivan currently serves as Accompanist and Assistant Conductor for the Concord Chorus, the Masterworks Chorale, and the Harvard-Radcliffe Chorus, in addition to freelance teaching and coaching.  He has performed widely in the Boston area and elsewhere in the United States and Europe as both accompanist and solo recitalist.  He appeared as piano soloist in the Beethoven Choral Fantasy at Harvard in 2023.  He was a keyboard harmony instructor and Affiliated Artist at MIT from 2018 to 2025, and has served as Music Consultant and annotator for Toscanini releases on the Immortal Performances label.  
 
His principal piano training was with the late Wayne Miller of Cambridge, supplemented by study at Tanglewood and the European American Musical Alliance in Paris.  Intensive, long-term study of historical recordings by the great artists in all genres has formed a further essential part of his musical training and culture.
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Mr. Sullivan was born in Cambridge, MA, and holds a degree in Music from Harvard College.  At Harvard, he directed the Dunster House Opera (now Harvard College Opera) for two seasons, preparing and conducting performances of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro (2006-2007) and Così fan tutte (2007-2008). In 2008-2009 he served as the 42nd music director of Harvard’s Bach Society Orchestra; previous music directors of “BachSoc” include John Harbison, John Adams, and Alan Gilbert.  As music director he prepared and conducted four concerts of works by Beethoven, Brahms, Finzi, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Prokofiev, Ravel, Rossini, and Verdi.  He completed the Mozart-Da Ponte trilogy by conducting a concert performance of Don Giovanni at Harvard in 2013.  His previous work includes positions with Concord-Carlisle High School, the Fenn School, the Radcliffe Choral Society and Holden Voice Program of Harvard, the American Repertory Theater, and the Jameson Singers, as well as appearances with, among others, the Boston Lyric Opera, Boston Wagner Society, Brandeis University, and New World Opera.