Michael Clark is a pianist, scholar, and Nationally Certified Teacher of Music (NCTM) based in Houston, Texas. He earned a Master of Music in Piano Performance and Pedagogy at the University of Houston’s Moores School of Music and a Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance at Ithaca College. He is currently pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts at Rice University. His primary teachers include Robert Roux, Nancy Weems, Jennifer Hayghe, and Melinda Smashey Jones. He studied piano pedagogy with John Weems and Courtney Crappell.
​
While at Ithaca College, Clark received the Peggy Ryan Williams Award for Academic and Community Leadership and the James J. Whalen Talented Young Artist Award, a full-tuition scholarship given to the incoming freshman with the highest academic and musical rating. He has appeared as a soloist with the Ozarks Festival Orchestra and the May Day Orchestra. Clark has received honors in competitions hosted by the New York Music Teachers Association and the Missouri Music Teachers Association. He has performed in master classes with internationally renowned artists including Richard Goode and Ilya Itin and spent summers studying at the Brevard Music Center and Music in the Mountains Conservatory. He continues to perform solo and collaborative recitals in Houston and his home state of Missouri. Watch him play here.

​Clark serves on the faculty of Music Academy of Houston and the University of Houston Preparatory and Continuing Studies Program, where he helped launch a Recreational Music Making program (Read Clark's article on Recreational Music Making here). He teaches students of all ages in both individual and group lessons. Clark is active in Forum Music Teachers Association, Texas Music Teachers Association, and Music Teachers National Association and has served as president of the Ithaca College and University of Houston collegiate chapters of MTNA. His recent scholarly projects include publications in the MTNA e-Journal and on the Clavier Companion website and presentations at the MTNA National Conference, American Musicological Society–Southwest Division Conference, Midwest Graduate Music Consortium, the MTNA Collegiate Chapters Piano Pedagogy Symposium, and the New York State Music Teachers Association Conference.