Luke Massery

In August of 2006, pianist Luke Massery was given the honor of performing the first recital in the Colonial Theater in his home town of Pittsfield, Massachusetts after its 25 Million Dollar restoration. One of the top acoustical houses in the world, the Colonial once saw the original Sousa Band and Rachmaninoff, but had been dormant as a performance venue for 70 years until Luke’s exhilarating performance in front of a capacity crowd of 800 people. Ivan Chan, first violinist for the renowned Miami String Quartet, has called him “One of the most sensitive pianists I’ve ever heard.” Luke has performed a program of mostly Gershwin at the Rochester Convention Center as a prelude to the Rochester Philharmonic’s Rhapsody in Rochester gala, which celebrated the success of their recently released Gershwin CD. Mr. Massery performed a live, half-hour broadcast on NPR that was heard across the northeast. He was invited to perform a prelude concert at the Boston Symphony Café just prior to Seiji Ozawa’s final concert as conductor of the Boston Symphony.

Luke was the second recipient of the Daniel Pearl Scholarship for musicians or journalists founded by the wife of the NYC Journalist who was killed in Afghanistan. He has studied at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute and privately with Jonathan Bass, Elizabeth Hagenah, and Edna Golandsky. Luke recently graduated from the prestigious Eastman School of Music where he studied under Dr. Douglas Humpherys, chairman of the piano department. An accomplished organist as well, Luke enjoys liturgical music ministry and continues to study organ. He is currently pursuing a Master of Music degree in Piano Performance and Collaborative Piano at UMass Amherst, where in April he made his concerto debut performing Prokofiev Concerto in Db with the UMass Symphony Orchestra.