Allen Bonde

Allen Bonde of South Hadley, MA, and Sarasota, FL, passed away on May 10 with his family at his side. Allen was born in Newton, Wisconsin in 1936 to Nicholas and Linda Gass Bonde, and attended Lawrence University Conservatory of Music. After graduation he studied at Catholic University in Washington DC, where he received a Doctor of Musical Arts degree, and received a number of honors including a Festival Casals Scholarship and a Yale Graduate Fellowship. Allen was a Professor of Music at Mount Holyoke College for most of his career, as well as a fellow at the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies, and the first musician-in-residence at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

A noted concert pianist and composer, he performed around the globe with a wide range of artists, including his spouse and talented pianist Maria Kushmerick Bonde and later his daughter, soprano Mara Bonde. He performed in many of the great concert venues, including Carnegie Recital Hall, the National Gallery of Art, and Severance Chamber Hall, yet some of his true joys were performing with the Mount Holyoke College Summer Theatre, playing polkas for his grandkids at family gatherings, and putting on benefit shows back in his native Wisconsin, a journey told in the September 1991 Reader’s Digest feature article “A Song of Home.”

At his peak Allen was a master of the keys, with the Washington Post calling his playing “brilliant” and the Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly referring to him as a “ball of energy.” As a composer his stylings spanned a wide range of genres from jazz to choral and symphonic works, to atonal technical pieces, to romantic songs, with Gramophone describing two of his favorite pieces (Three Elizabethan Songs and Three Elizabethan Songs Revisited) from his 2011 album Sound Spectrum as “the elegant simplicity of Bonde’s initial conception…gives way to a more theatrically developed virtuosity, resulting in equally compelling works.”

Always humble, deeply spiritual, a lover of gardening, nature, and family pets, and never one to pass up telling a good story or a bad pun, he was loved by all who had a chance to know him. His life was a blessing to him and his family, as well as all of those he influenced, inspired and touched over a remarkable life.

He is survived by his spouse of 60 years Maria Kushmerick Bonde, his three children, Allen Bonde Jr. (Colleen), Mara Bonde Ricker (Evan), and Lisa Bonde Grogan, 7 grandchildren, Nat, Sarah, and Caroline Bonde; Marina and Elle Ricker; Lily and Gigi Grogan, along with his brother Ralph Bonde of Ely, Minnesota.

There will be a memorial Mass at Saint Theresa of Lisieux Church in South Hadley on June 27, 2025, at 11:00am. Donations may be made in his name to the Conservatory of Music at Lawrence University in Appleton, WI.