Michael Banwarth

The third-year pianist with the Ryan Opera Center from Dubuque, Iowa, served on Lyric’s music staff for Blue (2024/25) and Champion (2023/24), and this season he will help prepare the company’s production of Cavalleria rusticana/Pagliacci. Banwarth recently completed a Master of Music in collaborative piano at the New England Conservatory of Music. A recipient of the Dean’s Scholarship and Gunther Schuller medal at NEC, he was a teaching assistant for the Song Lab program, performed frequently in the Liederabend and Sonata Night concert series, and prepared productions of The Turn of the Screw and L’enfant et les sortilèges. Banwarth was a staff pianist for the 2025 Internationale Meistersinger Akademie in Neumarkt, Germany, and was invited to be a 2022 vocal piano fellow at Music Academy of the West. He has also held fellowships at the Bay View Music Festival and the Atlantic Music Festival, and served as assistant music director and harpsichordist for the Iowa State Opera Studio during his undergraduate studies.

Michael Banwarth is sponsored by Nancy Dehmlow, Lori Julian for the Julian Family Foundation, Philip G. Lumpkin, and Richard O. Ryan.

^{Last updated: September 3, 2025}