David Deveau
Biography 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.
Now in his 22nd and final year (2017) 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, Deveau has earned enthusiastic praise from major publications including The New York Times, The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Minneapolis Tribune, San Diego Union-Tribune, Miami Herald, The Washington Post, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, New Orleans Times-Picayune, Le Figaro (Paris), and China Daily (Beijing).
His major orchestral engagements over the last four 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, Deveau made his 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, 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. Deveau returned to China in 2010 for a recital at the Shanghai Theater Academy, and performed an taught in Taipei and Tainan, Taiwan in 2012. In 2015, he toured Japan with clarinetist Richard Stoltzman.
Deveau has performed with members of the Juilliard, Shanghai, Borromeo, Brentano, 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 Symphony Chamber Players 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. As a collaborative artist, he tours annually with clarinet virtuoso Richard Stoltzman, and has collaborated with such noted artists as flutist Carol Wincenc, violinists Malcolm Lowe, Andres Cardenes, William Preucil, Joseph Silverstein, and Joel Smirnoff.
A music-faculty member at MIT since 1988, Deveau has mentored hundreds of gifted student pianists, including winners of the Naumburg and Van Cliburn (Amateur) competitions, and a number of his most accomplished students have performed concerti with the Boston Pops at Symphony Hall, Boston. 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. Deveau has given master classes throughout North America for the New England Piano Teachers Association, and at Harvard University and Dartmouth College, Boston University and the San Francisco Conservatory. He led a masterclass in Qingdao in 2005 for the National Piano Teachers of China Association.
Deveau recorded his debut solo disc for the Steinway and Sons label in 2015, "Siegfried Idyll" which features Wagner's Siegfried Idyll in a rare transcription by Josef Rubinstein along with related works of Liszt and Brahms. The recording was critically acclaimed by The New York Times, Gramophone, and other publications and was selected as one of the ten best records of the year by The Boston Globe. A 2017 release on the Artek label features works by Schubert for violin and piano with Andres Cardenes. 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).
