David Deveau

David Deveau (born 1953) is an American classical pianist. Born in Concord, Massachusetts, he has appeared as soloist with the Boston Symphony and Boston Pops Orchestras, the San Francisco, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Minnesota, Houston, Miami, Pacific and Portland Symphony Orchestras, and many regional orchestras in the United States and abroad. He made his New York debut in 1982 at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, and has performed solo and chamber music recitals at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, Merkin Hall and The Town Hall; the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and Benaroya Hall in Seattle. He made his debut solo tour of China in 2004-5. He is Artistic Director of Rockport Music (Massachusetts), and serves on the music faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Biography

Now in his seventeenth year as Artistic Director of the Rockport Chamber Music Festival, David Deveau has been critically acclaimed internationally for his expressive and poetic interpretations of solo piano repertoire ranging from Haydn to the present. He has been heard on four continents in recital, concerti and chamber music, and in recent years has presented the world premieres of works of John Harbison, Peter Child and other significant American composers.

As a performer, Mr. Deveau has earned enthusiastic praise from major publications including the New York Times, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Minneapolis Tribune, San Diego Union-Tribune, Miami Herald, Washington Post, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, New Orleans Times-Picayune, Le Figaro (Paris), and China Daily (Beijing).

His major orchestral engagements over the last three decades include performances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra (Haitink, Knussen), San Francisco Symphony (Blomstedt), Minnesota Orchestra (Silverstein), as well as the Houston, St. Louis, Pittsburgh and Miami Symphony Orchestras; the Pacific Symphony (California), Portland, and many others. In Boston, where he resides, he has appeared on many occasions as soloist with the Boston Pops (Lockhart, Williams), as soloist with the Handel and Haydn Society, Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra of Indian Hill, the Boston Philharmonic, Civic Symphony of Boston, New Philharmonia, and the Newton Symphony. Abroad, he has appeared as soloist with the Qingdao (China) Symphony, L’Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse (France) and many other regional and metropolitan orchestras.

In solo recital, David Deveau made his critically acclaimed New York debut at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center in 1982 as the recipient of the prestigious Solo Recitalist Award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Prior to this, in 1978, he was winner of the Concert Artists Guild Award (in chamber music) which resulted in his chamber music debut at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall. He has since performed frequently in New York at Town Hall, Merkin Hall, the Metropolitan Museum, the Whitney Museum, and Lincoln Center. Around the nation, he has appeared in recital at the Kennedy Center and Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., San Francisco’s Herbst Theater, Seattle’s Benaroya Hall, Minneapolis’s Orchestra Hall, Pittsburgh’s Heinz Hall, the Troy, New York Savings Bank Hall, Atlanta’s Spivey Hall, and myriad other series throughout the US and Canada. Internationally, Mr. Deveau made his debut concert tour of mainland China in early 2005, where he performed a New Year’s solo recital in Beijing at the Zhong Shan Music Hall in the Forbidden City, and the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 in Qingdao. Both performances were broadcast on China Central Television, and were featured on nationally televised morning news programs. He has also performed as soloist and chamber musician in England, Scotland, France and Germany. On January 14, 2006, he was presented in a solo concert by the Bank of America Celebrity Series to great critical acclaim.

Mr. Deveau has performed with members of the Juilliard, Shanghai, Borromeo, Muir, Ying, Kronos, Orion and St. Lawrence string quartets, the Diaz and Jacques Thibaud string trios, and has been a guest artist with the Boston Chamber Music Society on several occasions. Much in demand at summer music festivals, he has appeared in concert at Tanglewood, Caramoor, Wolf Trap, Mainly Mozart (San Diego), Seattle Chamber Music Festival, Strings in the Mountains (Colorado), the Montana Music Festival, the Viennese Sommerfest of the Minnesota Orchestra, the Kitchener-Waterloo (Ontario) concert society, Olympic Music Festival (Washington) and Bay Chamber Concerts in Maine. He is pianist of SONOS, a piano quartet based in Boston. As a collaborative artist, he tours annually with clarinet virtuoso Richard Stoltzman, and has often collaborated with such noted artists as flutist Carol Wincenc, violinists Andres Cardenes, Leonidas Kavakos, Joseph Silverstein, and Joel Smirnoff.

A music-faculty member at MIT since 1988, Mr. Deveau was himself a student of Veronica Jochum and Russell Sherman at the New England Conservatory, and of Beveridge Webster at the Juilliard School. He studied with the late Gaby Casadesus at L’Academie Internationale de Musique: Maurice Ravel in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, France. He has also coached with pianist Richard Goode. Mr. Deveau has given master classes throughout North America and abroad, most recently in Qingdao for the National Piano Teachers of China Association, for the New England Piano Teachers Association, and at Harvard University and Dartmouth College.

Mr. Deveau is heard internationally on PRI, as well as on the BBC, CBC, NPR, and on commercially available recordings on Albany Records (Peter Child)Centaur (Liszt) and EcoClassics (Schumann).

External links

• Hear David Deveau in concert from WGBH Boston
• MIT Music Faculty Page: David Deveau