Piano
Deborah Yardley Beers has developed a multifaceted musical career which has brought her awards and taken her across the United States and to Europe to perform, teach, and study. Her experiences as pianist, teacher, and composer have led her to develop a balanced and holistic perspective with regard to music and piano teaching that helps cultivate excellence, and is both individualistic and rooted in tradition.
Since performing Liszt’s Totentanz as soloist with the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra at age 16, Deborah Yardley Beers has performed as solo and chamber music recitalist across the United States and in several European countries. She has also performed live on radio WGBH and as soloist with the Atlanta Symphony, Denver Symphony, Kansas City Philharmonic Orchestra, Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra and the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory Orchestra. A recent review in the Boston Musical Intelligencer called a performance by Beers “heartfelt” and “strong on color and dynamic variation.”
As a pianist Beers has a strong foundation in the core piano repertoire. She has included on her public recitals works such as the “Hammerklavier” Sonata, and the first 12 Preludes and Fugues from Bach’s Well-tempered Clavier, Book 1. In addition, though, she has also found inspiration in performing works of lesser-known composers, particularly women composers and contemporary composers. In 1990 she commissioned and gave the world premiere of Novellette, op. 37, by Dianne Goolkasian Rahbee.
In 1978 Beers won a grant from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (through the Fulbright Commission) to study piano for a year in Germany. Beers was also a semifinalist as a pianist in the Ima Hogg National Young Artists Auditions in Houston, Texas; winner of the William S. Cooper Young Performers Award (from the Boulder Philharmonic Society); and winner of a Spencer Penrose Scholarship Award from the Central City (Colorado) Opera House Association.
Beers has a Doctor of Musical Arts in piano performance from the University of Colorado. She also holds a Master of Music degree in piano from the University of Missouri – Kansas City Conservatory, and a double Bachelor of Music degree in piano and theory from Florida State University. In addition she has studied piano at the Music Academy in Hannover, Germany; the International Summer Music Academy (Mozarteum) in Salzburg, Austria; the Curso Internacional de Música, Estoril, Portugal; and the International Bach Master Classes, Gunsbach, France. Her piano teachers have included Edward Kilenyi, Karl Engel, and Leonard Shure. Her chamber music coach was Dénes Koromzay.
Compositions by Deborah Yardley Beers have been performed at the Women Composers Festival of Hartford, at the Music By Women Festival in Mississippi, on a Faculty Artist Recital at Central Michigan University School of Music, at a concert at the Berklee College of Music, on the Seminar on Contemporary Music for the Young at the Rivers School Conservatory and on Modern American Music recitals at the Longy School of Music of Bard College. Pianists who have performed her music include Miguel Campinho, Jonathan Levin and Prof. Adrienne Wiley of Central Michigan University, and students of Angel Ramón Rivera.