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Ken Johansen was born in Denmark and grew up in Dallas, Texas. His studies took him to San Francisco, where he studied under Alain Naudé, a pupil of Dinu Lipatti, and Nadia Boulanger in Paris. He also honed his skills in piano with Gaby Casadesus and musicianship elements including harmony, counterpoint, solfège, and score reading with Narcis Bonet, a student of Boulanger's successor at the Conservatoire Americain Fontainebleau. He holds a Master's degree from the Peabody Conservatory and a Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of North Texas, specializing in piano performance. Since 2002, Johansen has been teaching keyboard skills to piano majors at Peabody. He is the author of "Harmony Piano" published by Routledge in 2023, a keyboard harmony textbook designed to assist pianists in learning repertoire musically and effectively. Additionally, he has published articles on topics related to piano music pedagogy in various journals including American Music Teacher and Journal of the American Liszt Society. He has also created an extensive series of study editions of piano works available on his website and is a co-inventor of Read Ahead, a piano sight-reading app developed with funding from the Maryland Innovation Initiative.