Joan Clare Conway died peacefully in Holland, Mich. on April 30, 2026 at the age of 90.
Joan was a chamber musician, soloist and collaborative pianist who performed nationally and was known as a two-piano and four-hands performer. She was a professor of piano at Hope College from 1969-2000. Her studio produced scores of excellent pianists, and her students were an integral part of her life for years after they left her studio. They literally were her extended family.
Joan was the only child of parents Dorothy Mildred (nee Neal) and Horace Shue Conway. She grew up in Dallastown, Penn. and graduated in 1953 from Dallastown Area Senior High School. She began studying piano as a child and in addition, displayed the fierce sense of competition that stayed with her throughout life as a member of her high school women’s basketball team.
Joan graduated with a degree in music education from Lebanon Valley College in 1957 and graduated in 1959 with a master’s degree in music (piano performance) from the Manhattan School of Music. She spent several years in New York City teaching and performing, and felt privileged to play concerts in Carnegie Recital Hall and Lincoln Center Library as well as the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. Before joining the faculty at Hope College in 1969, Joan taught at Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, Sarah Lawrence College and was a member of the New Marlboro Chamber Players in Massachusetts. She taught and performed at the Bay View Summer Music Festival for seven summers.
Joan was committed throughout her career to bringing outstanding classical music to the public. She performed and coordinated the Faculty Recital Series at Hope College. Joan and colleague Charles Aschbrenner became widely known as a dual piano team, “CONWAY & ASCHBRENNER,” performing together for 13 years. The duo was featured at the first Interlochen Piano Festival. For five years, the pair, joined by Joan’s longtime bestie Jill Christian, founded and ran the Hope College Two-Piano Camp. She founded and was artistic director of the Herrick Library Concert Series, which became Free@3, a well-regarded chamber music series at First Reformed Church that features outstanding regional talent and thanks to the organizational talents of her other “bestie”’ in life, Que-Lan Engels, Joan was able to continue the series in her later years. Additionally, she was the artistic director of the Chamber Music Festival of Saugatuck for ten years. She was past president of the Michigan Music Teachers Association.
Joan was a longtime member of First Reformed Church in Holland. She was a dearly loyal friend, a deep thinker, an incisive wit, devoted to her cats and her garden, a collector of fine art, a tireless bargain shopper. She was a lover of gin martinis, dinner parties, couch naps, the beach at Port Sheldon, sunsets, all vegetables, the Boston Celtics, Hope College Women’s Basketball, good books and all classical music. She could not abide a student who did not practice before a lesson, and she herself easily rehearsed for six or more hours at a time, being a night owl with a 2 a.m. bedtime. She leaves behind many dear friends whom she cherished and who cherished their time with her.
She was a true original with a heart for compassion, social justice, equality and excellence. She was also devoted to the idea that everyone, including herself, should get a color analysis done to identify their best palette for a harmonious attire with one’s skin undertones, hair and eye color. She always dressed in her “colors.” She was similarly devoted to using the intricate system of nicknames she co-created in the 1980s over a meal at a Chinese restaurant, henceforth called “Egg Roll” names. Hers was Ethel Meredith.
In 2011, Joan, her friends and her former students created the Joan Conway Piano Scholarship Fund at Hope College. This, as well as the Harbor Humane Society, are both suggested causes for donations to honor her legacy in lieu of flowers. Joan will be cremated and her remains buried with her parents in Dallastown Union Cemetery, Dallastown, York, Penn. A service to celebrate Joan’s life will be held at First Reformed Church, 630 State St., Holland, Mich. on May 30 at 10 a.m. Light refreshments will follow the memorial.
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