Donna Stoering, concert pianist...(the full story***)
..says her earliest memory is of being backstage at a huge community theater, excitedly waiting to go on as a "baby ballerina", aged two and a half. The ballet teacher later explained to Donna's parents that the tot had "absolutely no coordination or physical balance" but clearly felt the phrases, beats and rhythms of each new piece "rather instinctively and immediately" so she suggested they try to obtain a piano and some lessons. No teachers could be found who were willing to take a child that young, so Donna's mother signed up for the lessons herself, came home and shared what she learned, and at age four Donna was accepted into the special music programs at Mills College in California. She studied piano and composition there for the next 8 years under Joyce Grantham, a student of famed French composer Darius Milhaud who was in residence at Mills during that period.
...and that's how it all began. Donna gave her first public recital performance at age 5, in the revered Mills College Concert Hall, and included sonatas of her own composition in her solo recitals at age 10. But then at 12, it all stopped. Donna lost interest in practicing, but not playing - and fortunately her parents did not feel it necessary to push her to continue the classical music lessons, as they felt she would "choose it again" at a later stage if that was truly her calling. Instead she joined rock and jazz bands, sang on television, and directed public musical theater productions of her own composition - and all of this experience would later prove very useful in mentoring the many musicians of all cultures and music styles who have approached her for help and guidance throughout her multifaceted career.
A few years later, Donna happened to see a poster for a national piano competition and "felt a fire inside" to see if she could "catch up with the others" and compete at that level. Working once again with Joyce Grantham, she chose some pieces and "practiced like a fiend" every available second. She became a finalist prize winner after three rounds, and got to fly by herself for the first time, to perform a concert on the opposite coast of the US, and decided "this kind of life could be really exciting and rewarding". Nevertheless, always interested in "helping to heal people", Donna went off to college (nearby SJSU) at a young age intending to do pre-med and a minor in music.
In a stroke of fate, the Chairman of the music department heard her practicing down the hall a week after classes began, and he had just received a phone call from a SF Bay Area symphony conductor because their soloist had cancelled - Would she like the challenge? Donna had recently started her lifelong passion for Rachmaninov so she wanted to learn his 2nd Piano Concerto, but her new teacher, John Delevoryas, wisely talked her into playing something less ubiquitous even if just as beautiful - his First Piano Concerto in f-sharp. She got to perform it on tour with three different orchestras within a year, and that piece itself became another lifelong passion for Donna - she still eagerly looks for opportunities to perform it with symphony orchestras worldwide so that she can share its unique, angular beauties with orchestra players and audiences who have perhaps not experienced this concerto very often.
Soon, Ms Stoering was performing 80+ concerts per year (solo, concerto, and chamber music tours with a piano trio she had founded) while teaching 30 students per week and completing both her B.A. and M.A. degrees (in music and sociology) by the age of 19. A top prize winner at the International James Dick Piano Festival and Institute, she studied there with Lili Kraus and James Dick, and performed Mozart and Bach concerti with the Houston Symphony, New Orleans Philharmonic, and Houston Symphony Chamber Orchestra, all under major conductors. Invited to audition for a concerto performance opportunity at Orchestra Hall in Chicago, it was there that Donna met Mary Sauer, principal keyboardist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra who was developing a new approach to both teaching and performing on the piano. Ms Sauer invited Donna to live with her family for the summer, and she moved her teaching schedule around so that she and Donna could work together exploring the potential benefits of these new techniques for Donna's very small hands and frame. Sleeping on the living room couch near the beloved grand piano, Donna experienced her first mid-Western lightning storm one night and says she was "down the hallway and under Ms Sauer's bed in about 2 seconds flat". The intensive study with Ms Sauer (which was sponsored by the Chicago Symphony) transformed Donna's tone, phrasing, and physical ease at the piano, so when she then won a Marshall Scholarship and moved to England, she promised to return for coaching whenever possible, and to pass on these techniques (developing them further over the years) to her own students.
And she has kept that promise. While a Marshall Scholar, Ms Stoering taught undergrad and graduate students in piano, chamber music and performance coaching for two years at University of York (UK), while performing recitals and concerti in major concert halls throughout Europe and Great Britain. She then taught at schools in London and Oxford, before being appointed Artist in Residence to Oxford University (St Edmund Hall) for several years. She has served as jury member for international and national competitions in a number of countries. She has fulfilled invitations from music conservatories worldwide to give master classes on this "full body, playing from the core" relaxed technique for teachers and students alike, and she has launched international workshop retreats for pianists, so that they can have time out from their busy teaching and performing schedules to further develop these new techniques, and consider the many new approaches that have arisen in recent years, with increased insights into the muscular/neurological requirements of piano playing.
But meanwhile, her performance career has continued to blossom. She has performed solo recitals and concerti with major conductors and orchestras in the renowned music festivals and concert venues of Austria, Bosnia, Brazil, China, Croatia, the Czech Republic, England, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India, Latvia, Malta, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Norway, Panama, the Philippines, Republic of Georgia, Russia, Spain, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and throughout the UK and USA.
Donna shares that some of her favorite memories include: "solo performances in the Salzburg Mozarteum; London's Wigmore Hall, St John's Smith Square and the South Bank; a concert on the Celebrity Series of the great St Petersburg Philharmonic in Russia; a similar Celebrity Series concert in wonderful Amsterdam; 7 concert tours across Russia with multiple performances in the most revered halls of Moscow and St Petersburg; a very special palace concert in Prague; the very curious-friendly, beautiful and petite people of Turkmenistan where for the one and only time of my life I felt like a literal Jolly Green Giant walking amongst them; numerous beautiful halls throughout Italy; gorgeous performance settings on each of the islands in Hawaii; fortepiano recitals at England's Finchcocks Living Museum series; wonderful audiences in India; an especially fun tour of Norway; and a special Schumann Concerto performance at Last Night of the Proms in the historic Brahmshalle of Hamburg Germany...."
...Alternatively, some nightmarish memories for Donna include her becoming lost on her own, deep underground in the massive, multi-layer subway system of Kiev, Ukraine when she was en route to a performance - actually, a live recording of a concerto with Ukraine's National Radio And Television Orchestra - they finally sent the police out looking for her and when she eventually managed to surface above ground, she learned she had gone on the wrong train, half an hour's drive from the hall. But the police delivered her speedily and the orchestra laughed in relief when, upon her arrival, Donna apparently ran up the aisle, jumped up on the stage and played the first opening chords without missing a beat.
While serving as an Artistic Ambassador for both the UK and the USA to countries worldwide, Donna learned about the plight of master musicians in each culture, struggling to keep their families and their musical traditions alive against the onslaught of global pop media. So, having been offered her own 24/7 television channel on new digital networks in Europe, she wanted to help these musicians have opportunities to share their music cultures on her channel, and she founded an international for-profit/non-profit hybrid enterprise in London, which grew to offices in 45 countries within the first three years. With the encouragement and support of Lady Valerie Solti (the widow of Sir Georg Solti, of whom Donna had become a protege after he heard her play in London) that organization eventually became the award-winning nonprofit ListenForLife.org, which is now based in California and has had projects or volunteers in over 60 countries. The mission and service-based music projects of Listen for Life in turn led to speaking invitations, UN-organization collaborations, and book contract offers for Donna.
She has now been the subject of special programs on the BBC, Hong Kong Radio & TV, Brazilian national television, RAI (Italy), NPR and PBS stations, and the national networks of many other countries.
And still, Donna continues to perform and share her love of people and music, through music, wherever and whenever the opportunity arises - whether solo recitals, concerti, chamber music, or in duo-recitals with famed instrumentalists, or with opera stars of La Scala, Royal Opera, the Bolshoi, the Met, and more. And she relishes the opportunity to design, produce, promote and launch new concert series and music festivals in as many locations as possible - thus far she has done this on 3 continents.
Donna's recordings include an award-winning Debussy collection, a "Fantasy" CD recital recorded for a special event in Prague, an all-Chopin collection recorded in London, "Into the Stillness", a recently-released set of meditative improvisations with violist Erin Marie Nolan, recorded live in the SF Bay Area, "Against the Noise" released on the ACIS label in 2020, and a series of to-be-released albums of voice and piano music, with Andrey Nemzer (Rachmaninov Romances), Igor Vieira (Brazilian Art Songs), Stephen Guggenheim (Hebrew songs from the Synagogue to the Stage) and a music video of Gershwin and his era, with "Flicka"!
A NY review of Donna's 2012 Carnegie Hall recital performance called her "incomprehensibly talented" and a German newspaper spoke of her "ravishing intensity" , while the British press said: "This was a Beethoven performance to treasure" (Oxford Mail) and "she played brilliantly in an effortless manner; a most sensitive artist" (London Telegraph).
***To receive a short summary bio of Ms Stoering for media or program purposes, contact Donna ([email protected])
...and that's how it all began. Donna gave her first public recital performance at age 5, in the revered Mills College Concert Hall, and included sonatas of her own composition in her solo recitals at age 10. But then at 12, it all stopped. Donna lost interest in practicing, but not playing - and fortunately her parents did not feel it necessary to push her to continue the classical music lessons, as they felt she would "choose it again" at a later stage if that was truly her calling. Instead she joined rock and jazz bands, sang on television, and directed public musical theater productions of her own composition - and all of this experience would later prove very useful in mentoring the many musicians of all cultures and music styles who have approached her for help and guidance throughout her multifaceted career.
A few years later, Donna happened to see a poster for a national piano competition and "felt a fire inside" to see if she could "catch up with the others" and compete at that level. Working once again with Joyce Grantham, she chose some pieces and "practiced like a fiend" every available second. She became a finalist prize winner after three rounds, and got to fly by herself for the first time, to perform a concert on the opposite coast of the US, and decided "this kind of life could be really exciting and rewarding". Nevertheless, always interested in "helping to heal people", Donna went off to college (nearby SJSU) at a young age intending to do pre-med and a minor in music.
In a stroke of fate, the Chairman of the music department heard her practicing down the hall a week after classes began, and he had just received a phone call from a SF Bay Area symphony conductor because their soloist had cancelled - Would she like the challenge? Donna had recently started her lifelong passion for Rachmaninov so she wanted to learn his 2nd Piano Concerto, but her new teacher, John Delevoryas, wisely talked her into playing something less ubiquitous even if just as beautiful - his First Piano Concerto in f-sharp. She got to perform it on tour with three different orchestras within a year, and that piece itself became another lifelong passion for Donna - she still eagerly looks for opportunities to perform it with symphony orchestras worldwide so that she can share its unique, angular beauties with orchestra players and audiences who have perhaps not experienced this concerto very often.
Soon, Ms Stoering was performing 80+ concerts per year (solo, concerto, and chamber music tours with a piano trio she had founded) while teaching 30 students per week and completing both her B.A. and M.A. degrees (in music and sociology) by the age of 19. A top prize winner at the International James Dick Piano Festival and Institute, she studied there with Lili Kraus and James Dick, and performed Mozart and Bach concerti with the Houston Symphony, New Orleans Philharmonic, and Houston Symphony Chamber Orchestra, all under major conductors. Invited to audition for a concerto performance opportunity at Orchestra Hall in Chicago, it was there that Donna met Mary Sauer, principal keyboardist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra who was developing a new approach to both teaching and performing on the piano. Ms Sauer invited Donna to live with her family for the summer, and she moved her teaching schedule around so that she and Donna could work together exploring the potential benefits of these new techniques for Donna's very small hands and frame. Sleeping on the living room couch near the beloved grand piano, Donna experienced her first mid-Western lightning storm one night and says she was "down the hallway and under Ms Sauer's bed in about 2 seconds flat". The intensive study with Ms Sauer (which was sponsored by the Chicago Symphony) transformed Donna's tone, phrasing, and physical ease at the piano, so when she then won a Marshall Scholarship and moved to England, she promised to return for coaching whenever possible, and to pass on these techniques (developing them further over the years) to her own students.
And she has kept that promise. While a Marshall Scholar, Ms Stoering taught undergrad and graduate students in piano, chamber music and performance coaching for two years at University of York (UK), while performing recitals and concerti in major concert halls throughout Europe and Great Britain. She then taught at schools in London and Oxford, before being appointed Artist in Residence to Oxford University (St Edmund Hall) for several years. She has served as jury member for international and national competitions in a number of countries. She has fulfilled invitations from music conservatories worldwide to give master classes on this "full body, playing from the core" relaxed technique for teachers and students alike, and she has launched international workshop retreats for pianists, so that they can have time out from their busy teaching and performing schedules to further develop these new techniques, and consider the many new approaches that have arisen in recent years, with increased insights into the muscular/neurological requirements of piano playing.
But meanwhile, her performance career has continued to blossom. She has performed solo recitals and concerti with major conductors and orchestras in the renowned music festivals and concert venues of Austria, Bosnia, Brazil, China, Croatia, the Czech Republic, England, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India, Latvia, Malta, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Norway, Panama, the Philippines, Republic of Georgia, Russia, Spain, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and throughout the UK and USA.
Donna shares that some of her favorite memories include: "solo performances in the Salzburg Mozarteum; London's Wigmore Hall, St John's Smith Square and the South Bank; a concert on the Celebrity Series of the great St Petersburg Philharmonic in Russia; a similar Celebrity Series concert in wonderful Amsterdam; 7 concert tours across Russia with multiple performances in the most revered halls of Moscow and St Petersburg; a very special palace concert in Prague; the very curious-friendly, beautiful and petite people of Turkmenistan where for the one and only time of my life I felt like a literal Jolly Green Giant walking amongst them; numerous beautiful halls throughout Italy; gorgeous performance settings on each of the islands in Hawaii; fortepiano recitals at England's Finchcocks Living Museum series; wonderful audiences in India; an especially fun tour of Norway; and a special Schumann Concerto performance at Last Night of the Proms in the historic Brahmshalle of Hamburg Germany...."
...Alternatively, some nightmarish memories for Donna include her becoming lost on her own, deep underground in the massive, multi-layer subway system of Kiev, Ukraine when she was en route to a performance - actually, a live recording of a concerto with Ukraine's National Radio And Television Orchestra - they finally sent the police out looking for her and when she eventually managed to surface above ground, she learned she had gone on the wrong train, half an hour's drive from the hall. But the police delivered her speedily and the orchestra laughed in relief when, upon her arrival, Donna apparently ran up the aisle, jumped up on the stage and played the first opening chords without missing a beat.
While serving as an Artistic Ambassador for both the UK and the USA to countries worldwide, Donna learned about the plight of master musicians in each culture, struggling to keep their families and their musical traditions alive against the onslaught of global pop media. So, having been offered her own 24/7 television channel on new digital networks in Europe, she wanted to help these musicians have opportunities to share their music cultures on her channel, and she founded an international for-profit/non-profit hybrid enterprise in London, which grew to offices in 45 countries within the first three years. With the encouragement and support of Lady Valerie Solti (the widow of Sir Georg Solti, of whom Donna had become a protege after he heard her play in London) that organization eventually became the award-winning nonprofit ListenForLife.org, which is now based in California and has had projects or volunteers in over 60 countries. The mission and service-based music projects of Listen for Life in turn led to speaking invitations, UN-organization collaborations, and book contract offers for Donna.
She has now been the subject of special programs on the BBC, Hong Kong Radio & TV, Brazilian national television, RAI (Italy), NPR and PBS stations, and the national networks of many other countries.
And still, Donna continues to perform and share her love of people and music, through music, wherever and whenever the opportunity arises - whether solo recitals, concerti, chamber music, or in duo-recitals with famed instrumentalists, or with opera stars of La Scala, Royal Opera, the Bolshoi, the Met, and more. And she relishes the opportunity to design, produce, promote and launch new concert series and music festivals in as many locations as possible - thus far she has done this on 3 continents.
Donna's recordings include an award-winning Debussy collection, a "Fantasy" CD recital recorded for a special event in Prague, an all-Chopin collection recorded in London, "Into the Stillness", a recently-released set of meditative improvisations with violist Erin Marie Nolan, recorded live in the SF Bay Area, "Against the Noise" released on the ACIS label in 2020, and a series of to-be-released albums of voice and piano music, with Andrey Nemzer (Rachmaninov Romances), Igor Vieira (Brazilian Art Songs), Stephen Guggenheim (Hebrew songs from the Synagogue to the Stage) and a music video of Gershwin and his era, with "Flicka"!
A NY review of Donna's 2012 Carnegie Hall recital performance called her "incomprehensibly talented" and a German newspaper spoke of her "ravishing intensity" , while the British press said: "This was a Beethoven performance to treasure" (Oxford Mail) and "she played brilliantly in an effortless manner; a most sensitive artist" (London Telegraph).
***To receive a short summary bio of Ms Stoering for media or program purposes, contact Donna ([email protected])