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At age sixteen, pianist-composer-songwriter Emily Bear enjoys arranging, orchestrating, and performing in a diverse collection of styles. Having made her professional debut at the Ravinia Festival at five years old, she has since performed at many of the worlds’ most well-known venues, including Carnegie Hall, the White House, Lincoln Center, Montreux Jazz Festival, Blue Note, and the Hollywood Bowl, among others. Her concerts have taken her to concert halls across the United States, Europe, and Asia, and her love for all musical styles ranges from pop, classical, jazz, and everything in-between.
Bear was the youngest to ever receive the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award at age six, and symphonies all over the world have performed her original orchestral pieces. She is the 2016 and 2017 recipient of the ASCAP Herb Alpert Jazz Composer of the Year Award and recently was commissioned to arrange an original composition performed by twenty-five pianos at the same time for Street Pianos Mesa.
Establishing herself as a classical artist, she performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 23 at the age of seven. Other pieces in her concerto repertoire include Schumann Piano Concerto, Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin, and the Grieg Piano Concerto in A Minor.
Bear also loves composing for film and television and recently scored six national commercials for Weight Watchers Simple Start campaign. She has released several CDs of original music, and her most recent album, Into the Blue, topped the Billboard charts. Her previous album, Diversity, was produced by Quincy Jones for Concord Music. Her five-sheet music songbooks of original music are distributed worldwide by Hal Leonard Music. Bear has helped raise millions for charities across the globe through performances and events.
She’s the most delightful human being I’ve ever met in my life. . . . And her music is the same way. I am at once astounded and inspired by the enormous talent that Emily embodies. With the ability to seamlessly move from Classical to Jazz and Be-bop, she shows as much musical prowess as pianists-composers twice her age, and I am thrilled to be working with her. She’s astounding. . . . She plays like she’s 40 years old. She is the complete 360-degree package, and there are no limits to the musical heights she can reach.
—Quincy Jones
I first saw Emily at the Stuttgart Jazz Festival, in 2015. I was totally knocked out. Wow! She is an immensely talented young artist, with a long and successful career ahead her.
—David Sanborn