ObituaryRobert Fred Kern
Submitted on Friday, August 21, 2020
Robert Fred Kern, 75, of Dallas, Professor Emeritus of music and specialist in piano
education at UNT from 1980 to 2011, died Aug. 14. Previously, he was a professor at
William Rainey Harper College and Northwestern University. Kern earned a bachelor’s
degree from Illinois State University, master’s degrees from Illinois Wesleyan and
Northwestern University, and a doctorate from the University of Northern Colorado.
He was an author and co-author of seven piano methods and contributed more than 500
original compositions and arrangements to several pedagogical publications. He taught
clinics all around the country, as well as in Canada and Taiwan. He was inducted into
the Illinois State University Woonsok Kim College of Fine Arts Hall of Fame in 2014,
and he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Conference on Keyboard
Pedagogy.