Award-winning pianist Dr. Stuart Deaver will perform a free concert on Sunday, March 3 at 3 p.m. at the Ataloa Theatre of East Central University’s Hallie Brown Ford Fine Arts Center.
Deaver, who currently served as a professor of piano at the University of Tulsa, has won numerous awards and has performed across the United States as well as internationally in Portugal and Japan.
He was invited to perform and lecture on the complete solo minimalist works by American composer John Adams and Palacio Foz in Lisbon, Portugal in 2010. He returned to Portugal in 2012 for a solo recital at Teatro Eduardo Brazao (Vila Nova de Gaia) in the northern region.
Deaver was also invited to play a solo recital of works by Mozart, Jose Vianna da Motta and John Adams at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, N.J., in 2011. Recordings of this performance were selected for radio broadcast and can be heard on classical radio station WWFM, which serves the greater New York City area.
He began playing the piano at age 11 and, by the age of 16, was the first-place winner of the Tulsa Philharmonic’s Young Artist Competition which led to his orchestral debut performances at Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto with the Tulsa Philharmonic Orchestra, under the direction of Bernard Rubinstein.
Deaver maintains an active performance schedule as a chamber musician and has collaborated with esteemed musicians around the country such as violinist Maureen O’Boyle, clarinetist Paul Garritson, cellist Diane Bucchianari and baritone Brady McElligott.
He performed a series of recitals in 2009 with Bucchianari that featured Rachmaninov’s Sonata for Cello and Piano. His collaboration in 2010 with O’Boyle featured a series of recitals of sonatas by Franck and Brahms. The tour included a performance at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, N.M.
Deaver is an active adjudicator through MTNA and was invited to sit on the jury of the inaugural Schmidbauer International Piano Competition in Texas in 2008. He was also on the staff of the 15th and 16th Vianna da Motta International Piano Competitions in Lisbon, Portugal in 2004 and 2007.
He is also involved in music theory research and has presented his work at conference and universities around the country, including the Rocky Mountain Society of Music Theory at the University of Denver, the 15th Music Theory (MTMW) Conference at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio, and at Rider University in Princeton, N.J.
At MTMW, Deaver was awarded the Arthur J. Komar Award for outstanding research and presentation of his paper Musical Equivalency of Alphabetical Order in Torke’s Telephone Book.
He has held teaching positions at the University of Kansas, Midwestern Music Camp and ECU. Deaver holds a doctor of musical arts degree from the University of Kansas where he studied exclusively with the renowned pianist Sequeira Costa.