She studies jazz improvisation with Frank Kimbrough and composing with Ron Sadoff, head of NYU Steinhardt film scoring department. Since age six, Bear has studied classical piano with the former principal keyboardist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Mary Sauer, and also studies with Veda Kaplinsky, head of the piano department at the Juilliard School. By the age of eight, she had composed more than 350 pieces. She also participated that year at the McDonald's Thanksgiving Parade in Chicago and performed the next year on Good Morning America. She performed the same piece later in 2008 with the Rockford Symphony Orchestra. 23 with the Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra at the age of 7. Bush, at the age of six, and performed Mozart's Piano Concerto No. She played in 2008 at the White House for President George W. She also won the Rockford Area Music Industry Outstanding Achievement Award (RAMI) that year.Īs a small child, Bear made six appearances on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. At age six, in 2008, she won her first ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Award for her piece "Northern Lights", the youngest composer ever to win the award. Soon she was enrolled at the Winnetka campus to study classical music. She made her professional piano debut at the Ravinia Festival at age five, the youngest performer to play there. Hal Leonard Music has been publishing Bear's original compositions since she was 4 years old. The next year, Bear began to study with Emilio del Rosario at the Music Institute of Chicago. By age three, she had composed her first song, "Crystal Ice". When Bear was two years old, her grandmother Merle Langs Greenberg, a piano teacher, recognized her talent at the piano. She plans to attend Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. After being home-schooled for a few years, Bear enrolled in Guilford High School in Rockford in 2015, graduating at age 15 in 2017. Her mother has sung professionally and has a music education degree. No wonder Q is pushing this young and gifted talent.Bear was born and raised in Rockford, Illinois, the youngest of three children of Brian, an orthopedic surgeon, and Andrea Bear. One of my fellow students in the class was a classical pianist and he couldn’t play a note of jazz improv because he didn’t have sheet music in front of him dictating what to do.Įmily Bear plays both jazz and classical, plus very well too. When I was in music school, I took an improvisation class. As Quincy Jones remarks, “She plays like she’s 40 years old…” Usually jazz pianists can play some classical repertoire, but classical players who try to play jazz often sound forced and wooden. Only 1 year later, she was having pieces published and distributed by Hal Leonard when she was only 4 years old. Where did this young talent come from anyway? Born in 2001 in Rockford, Illinois, Emily was composing music by the time she was only 3 years old. Emily Bear’s new album, Diversity (The original image is no longer available, please contact KCRW if you need access to the original image.) Well, 11 year old Emily Bear has done just that, and proof is on her new Concord album, Diversity. It’s another thing when that same classical prodigy can play jazz well enough to please a giant like Quincy Jones. It’s one thing to find some young classical talent that’s been nurtured from age 3 on the Suzuki method with a toy piano and can glide through Chopin and Schumann. Quincy Jones with Emily Bear (The original image is no longer available, please contact KCRW if you need access to the original image.)
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