Connor O'Kane
Piano
Office: TC 405
Email: cokane2@uwo.ca
Prizewinner in the 2022 CMC Stepping Stone, Connor O’Kane is a highly sought-after pianist, conductor, chamber musician, vocal coach, and teacher. Following his concerto debut with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony in 2014 under the baton of Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser, he has appeared as a recitalist in the United States, France, and across Canada. He is regularly invited to perform in such concert series as the Canadian Opera Company Noon Concert Series, Sundays at Chateau Windrush, Noon at St. Andrews Toronto, Ottawa Chamberfest, and The Banff Centre Summer Arts Festival. He has also made recent appearances as a guest artist in noon hour concerts at Brock University, Western University, and the University of Waterloo.
A passionate collaborative musician with a special affinity for opera, Connor has enjoyed success as a music director, conductor, vocal coach, harpsichordist, and répétiteur. In 2024 he joined the Glenn Gould School of the Royal Conservatory of Music as music director of Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges and Debussy’s Progidal Son, and assistant conductor of Die Zauberflöte. Other recent conducting credits include Carmen (Toronto City Opera), Albert Herring (Western University), and St. Matthew Passion (The Banff Centre). He previously spent five years as assistant conductor of opera at Western University, in addition to répétiteur/continuo work at the National Arts Centre, Banff Centre, the University of Ottawa, and Wilfrid Laurier University.
Connor’s chamber music collaborations are richly varied. In 2026 he will perform alongside mezzo Michal Aloni in a recital program of Hebrew music by Jewish composers titled “Pictures from the Private Collection of God,” presented as part of the Canadian Opera Company’s Vocal Series. In the 2024-25 season he joined pianist Ryan Baxter to present a series of recitals featuring four-hands piano sonatas by Australian composers Carl Vine and Stuart Greenbaum, which represented the Canadian premiere of both works. A champion of Canadian and contemporary music, he is currently pursuing a comprehensive Canadian art-song recording project with renowned soprano Natalie Image. Together they completed a residency at the Canadian Music Centre in Vancouver in 2024, generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.
Connor was recently appointed as a piano instructor at Western University, where he completed a Doctor of Musical Arts in 2023. For his research on the piano transcriptions of Sergei Prokofiev, he was awarded the SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, having previously held a Canada Graduate Scholarship for his research on Ferruccio Busoni. Connor studied piano with Stéphan Sylvestre, David Jalbert, Heather Taves, and Joan Walker, with additional training at the Conservatoire de Lyon in the studio of Manuel Schweizer. He also maintains a small private studio of dedicated piano students in Kitchener-Waterloo, and is frequently invited to serve as an adjudicator at provincial and local music festivals, such as the Ontario Music Festivals Association, Kitchener-Waterloo Kiwanis Music Festival, Pickering Rotary Music Festival, and the Guelph Kiwanis Music Festival.
