David Keep
Assistant Professor of Music
Dr. David Keep teaches piano and music theory. He also serves as the Department of Music’s keyboard area head. He has taught at Hope since 2020.
In his teaching, Dr. Keep is passionate about cultivating the whole musician: mind, body and soul. His award-winning students excel as pianists, scholars and artists. Dr. Keep prepares his students for lifelong learning through piano lessons, aural skills, music theory and the seminar in music. He often advises student researchers in the summers, focusing especially on the intersections of piano performance and analysis.
Dr. Keep loves exploring with his students how music has meaning, whether through listening, sight-singing, analysis, performing or research. One of his primary goals is to empower students to have deeper musical experiences and to share their experiences with others.
AREAS OF EXPERTISE
Dr. Keep’s areas of expertise center around piano performance, Western art music of the 19th century, music theory and the intersections of faith and music.
EDUCATION
- Ph.D., music theory, Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester
- M.M., piano performance, Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University
- B.M., piano performance, Lawrence University
Publication
- “The Voice of Enigma: Intertextuality in ‘Im wunderschönen Monat Mai,’” Intégral: The Journal of Applied Musical Thought, 2023
- “Brahms ‘versus’ Liszt: The Internalization of Virtuosity,” in Liszt and Virtuosity (edited by Robert Duran), co-winner of the American Liszt Society’s 2023 Triennial Alan Walker Book Prize, University of Rochester Press, 2020
Presentations
- “From Song to Concerto: Recomposition, Retrieval, and Closure in Amy Beach’s Piano Concerto in C# minor, op. 45,” presentation at Society for Music Theory conference, Jacksonville, Florida, 2024
- “The Brahmsian Sublime,” presentation at American Brahms Society conference, New Orleans, 2022
Perfomances
- Solo piano recital (Brahms Fantasien, op. 116 and Waltzes, op. 39), Lake Michigan Music Series, St. Joseph, Michigan, 2024
- Four-hand piano recital with Dr. Allison Keep at Brahms Gesamtausgabe, Christian-Albrechts-Universität in Kiel, Germany, 2023
Outside the college
Dr. Keep lives in Holland with his wife, Dr. Allison Keep, who also teaches piano in Hope’s Department of Music. Together they lead a church history course for high school students at 14th Street Christian Reformed Church. The Drs. Keep love coffee, pastries and debates about which states are truly mitten-shaped.
