Emily Bear

Emily Bear (born August 30, 2001) is an American composer and pianist, who has achieved wide notice at an early age.^[1] After beginning to compose and play piano as a small child, Bear has played with orchestras in the U.S., Europe and Asia, at such venues as Carnegie Hall and the Hollywood Bowl. She released her first studio album in 2013, produced by her mentor, Quincy Jones.

Life and career

Emily Bear was born and raised in Rockford, Illinois, the youngest of three children of Brian, an orthopedic surgeon, and Andrea Bear.^[2] After getting homeschooled for a few years she is now visiting high-school in Rockford.^[3]

When Bear was two years old, her grandmother, Merle Langs Greenberg, recognized her talent at the piano.^[4] Bear began to study with Emilio del Rosario at the Music Institute of Chicago. Within four years, she was enrolled at the Winnetka campus to study classical music. Bear started to compose music at the age of three. By the age of eight, she had composed more than 350 pieces.^[5] For her piece "Northern Lights" she won the ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Award for composers under 18 years of age.^[6] She also won the Rockford Area Music Industry Award (RAMI).^[7] Bear debuted at the Ravinia Festival at age 5.^[8]

Bear has made several appearances on The Ellen DeGeneres Show,^[9] played at the White House for President George W. Bush, at the age of six,^[6] and performed Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23 with the Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra. Through the years she performed a few classical pieces with different orchestras, the first movement of Schumann piano concert in 2012,^[10] Gershwin's - Rhapsody in Blue in 2014^[11][12][13] and Grieg's piano concert in 2016.^[14]

Emily Bear made her debut at Carnegie Hall in 2010 at age 9.^[8] In 2011, she appeared at the Hollywood Bowl before more than 11,000 people, where she played a medley of her own arrangement, "The Bumble Boogie" and performed "Miss Celie's Blues" (from the score of The Color Purple) with singers Gloria Estefan, Patti Austin, Siedah Garrett and Nikki Yanofsky. That summer, her mentor, Quincy Jones, presented Bear at the 45th Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland^[2] and the Festival Castell in Peralada, Spain where she performed solo as well as with Esperanza Spalding.^[8] Jones stated: "I am at once astounded and inspired by the enormous talent that Emily embodies. ... She is the complete 360-degree package, and there are no limits to the musical heights that she can reach."^[8]

Since age six, Bear has studied classical piano with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s principal keyboardist Mary Sauer and also studies with Veda Kaplinsky, head of the piano department at Juilliard. She studies jazz improvisation with Frank Kimbrough, head of the Juilliard jazz department and composing with Ron Sadoff, head of New York University Film Scoring Department.^[15]

When only 12 years old, Bear was part of the 2013 ASCAP/ NYU Television and Film Scoring Workshop. Until now she has composed for TV, film and commercials.^[16] So she scored a national Weight Watchers campaign in 2013.^[17]

Released in May 2013, Diversity, a jazz album on the Concord Records label, produced by Jones, was recorded at Westlake Recording Studios in Los Angeles. Bear composed all of the music on the album.^[2] The album peaked at No. 3 on Billboard's Traditional Jazz Albums chart.^[18] In July 2013 she was part of a few Quincy Jones 80th birthday concerts in Montreux, Swiss^[19] and in Seoul/South Korea and in Japan.

In 2015, Bear won another ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Award for her orchestral piece "Les Voyages"^[20]

In July 2015, she performed at the Jazzopen jazz festival in Stuttgart, where she gave several concerts.^[21]

On October 15, 2015 she was speaker at the Chicago Ideas Week^[22] and at the end of February 2016 she was part of the "Play Me, I'm Yours" Street Piano Event in Mesa/Arizona. For the opening gala Bear orchestrated her orchestral piece "The Bravest Journey", which had been originally written for the veteran event "Stars & Stripes: A Salute to Our Veterans" with General Colin Powell and 6000 people in her hometown Rockford/ Illinois on October 10, 2015 ,^[23]for 25 pianos.^[24] For the veteran event Bear had also scored the interview videos with 50 local veterans.^[25]

In 2015 she was also part of the Broadway Cast Recording of the musical Doctor Zhivago which was released in May 2015. She was invited to play a solo piano version of "He's There".^[26]

Bear received the Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composers Award for her jazz song "The Old Office", awarded by the ASCAP Foundation, in 2016.^[27]

On August 28, 2016 she was featured in a Disney Channel program, e.g. performing Reflection (Mulan) with Laura Marano.^[28]

The same day Bear launched a new official website, where she also shows a first impression of her steps into singing, the pop genre and her upcoming new album.^[29][30]

On January 27, 2017, Bear will release a new jazz EP "Into the Blue" It was recorded in NY in September 2015 with her jazz trio (Peter Slavov, Mark McLean).^[31]

Discography

• Five Years Wise (2007)
• The Love In Us (2008)
• Once Upon A Wish (2008)
• Always True (2009)
• Hope (2010)
• Diversity (2013)

 "Into the Blue" (2017)

References

External links

• Official site
• Emily Bear: Girl with a Gift WGN feature
• Diversity at Allmusic.com