Piano

As an artist, NEC’s piano faculty will educate you as a performer of works past, present, and future.

As a piano student at the school, you will work with our internationally renowned faculty, and receive lessons from a senior teacher—not from an assistant or surrogate. The traditional private lesson is vital in our curriculum; you will also participate in piano studio classes; master-classes with NEC faculty and such visiting artists as Emanuel Ax (in photo), Richard Goode, Murray Perahia, Menahem Pressler, András Schiff, Fou T'song; solo and concerto competitions; and festivals. You will learn by participating in chamber music ensembles and by interacting with colleagues both within and outside the major. Our students and graduates have won top prizes in the world’s most prestigious competitions (Queen Elisabeth, Tchaikovsky, Leeds, Rubinstein, Cliburn, Liszt, Dublin, Busoni, Kapell), and are trained to meet the highest international standards of piano playing and music making.

Outside of the studio, you will have many opportunities to listen, learn, and perform. Featuring NEC piano faculty and special guests, weekly piano performance seminars explore listening, looking, learning, and living as a practicing professional pianist. Annually, NEC piano students are presented in a festival that includes performances in NEC's Jordan Hall, along with a year-end Honors Concert in Jordan Hall.

In 2006, NEC piano students performed music by Beethoven and Schoenberg in Jordan Hall in conjunction with James Levine's Beethoven/Schoenberg programs with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In 2008, about thirty NEC piano majors performed Messiaen's complete Catalogue of the Birds and Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jesus in Jordan Hall. In 2009, piano students from the College and Preparatory School performed all of Haydn's piano sonatas in a series of concerts at NEC, with an additional series of concerts in Los Angeles. In 2010, a pair of piano department concerts and other performances will explore music of Chopin during his bicentennial year.

NEC piano faculty shop for Steinways

Read the comments of NEC piano faculty as they explore the qualities that make a piano just right for NEC's Jordan Hall or Williams Hall.

NEC pianists on the road

NEC piano department chair Bruce Brubaker recently performed at New York's (Le) Poisson Rouge, a year-old multimedia art cabaret venue that The New York Times has dubbed as “a downright musical marvel.”

In this video clip from YouTube, Brubaker performs Alvin Curran's Hope Street Tunnel Blues III on a Steinway K0862, showcasing his flair for performing challenging and complex modern musics.

photo of Emanuel Ax masterclass by Andrew Hurlbut

YouTube video of Bruce Brubaker performing Alvin Curran's Hope Street Tunnel Blues III, courtesy Youtube user karlheinzcage

2010-01-12