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Harold Fortuin began piano studies as a boy,
winning numerous youth competitions and awards, and by high school was accompanying the show choir, playing paid gigs with a jazz combo, and attending the Interlochen Music Camp. He won a full tuition scholarship to Wayne State University in Detroit, where he studied privately with Detroit Symphony piano artist
Mischa Kottler and renowned jazz arranger and pianist Matt Michaels, and then continued for graduate studies at Michigan State University on a Dean's Recruitment Fellowship with concert pianist Ralph Votapek. |
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He began private teaching of children and adults while still an undergrad, and his students won numerous awards in the American Guild of Music Great Lakes Regional competitions, in which he also served as a judge. He also taught piano to underprivileged youth at the Weekend School of Music at Wayne State, and accompanied the Judelaires adult show choir, and competed on piano in the live broadcast WQRS/CKLW Quest for Excellence competitions during those years. For his B.Mus. degree recital he performed the Bach Italian Concerto, a Haydn Sonata, a Debussy Suite, and a Prokofiev Sonata, including all movements of each, and all entirely memorized. |
| After completing graduate degrees in music composition, including study in Europe, he settled in the Minneapolis area where he resumed teaching, including students at Schmitt Music, but moved to Boston with his wife in 2001. After a few years, he resumed teaching piano and music theory, and accompanied talented area music students at New England Conservatory Prep and the Suzuki Institute of Boston. |
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In parallel with teaching and accompanying, he has managed to present a number of private and public piano concerts, including a solo performance at the Zeitgeist Gallery (Cambridge, MA) Piano Festival, and various Classical and original piano pieces in the Fall River (Mass.) Arts Around the Block festivals.
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