Jean Beers, a British-German concert pianist and composer, who has performed internationally at famous concert halls including the Philharmonic Hall in Kiev, the Konzerthaus in Berlin, the Southbank Centre and Wigmore Hall in London, Palau de la Musica in Barcelona and Ehrbarsaal in Vienna.
She has been awarded numerous international prizes for her piano playing. The city of Salzburg has also awarded the prestigious Mozarteum Prize to Beers. Her performance at the world famous Festival "Salzburger Festspiele" was broadcast live pm Austrian radio, who published highlights of her concert alongside performances by Martha Argerich and Daniel Barenboim.
For her compositions, Beers has won several prizes at the tender age of 17, as well as her works being performed by musicians of the Philharmonia Orchestra and London Sinfonietta, the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra and the Salzburg Chamber Soloists, alongside many more. Violinist Niklas Liepe and his brother Nils premiered her Duo for violin and piano “Schmetterlinghaus” in the birth house of Beethoven in Bonn, Germany.
In her art, Beers questions and removes boundaries in all her artistic endeavors.
Beers is professor and head of Institute for Keyboard, Composition and Conducting at the Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna (MUK). She is also a researcher and scholar, having reviewed her doctorate in composition (PhD) from the prestigious British Russell Group University, King’s London (KCL), published as the book “Creating Ambiguity in Music” in 2018. She also holds degrees in piano and composition from several of Europe’s top Music Universities such as the Royal Academy of Music in London, and the highest concert artist degree from Hanover in Germany (Konzertexamen).
As artist, concert curator, and professor, she is passionately dedicated to teaching and innovation in extending the traditional borders of chamber music and music styles, and is helping students to fully realize their own potential so as to enable them to adjust to modern requirements. She has spearheaded and curated concert and lecture series and is an avid advocate of an interdisciplinary journey through the arts while using tools of curiosity and empathy to break down borders between disciplines and people and their traditions.
Jean Beers has performed in great concert halls such as the Großer Saal and the Solitär at Mozarteum Salzburg, the Philharmonie Luxembourg, Konzerthaus in Berlin. Most recently, the composer-pianist Beers has performed to great acclaim her Piano Concerto “Nachklang”, which was shown on national television channel CCTV 15 in China at the NCPA hall (National Center of Performing Arts) in Beijing and celebrated widely by press reviews and experts in the community of composition, performance and academic music.
Beers is an international prize winner and has extensively performed piano solo and chamber music from the Romantic, Classical and Baroque eras, as well as 20th and 21st century music of various styles to experimental playing techniques and improvisation throughout Europe, Russia and the USA, as well as in China. In her concert repertoire, Beers likes to focus on Russian and French music of the early 20th century in combination with Beethoven and her own music. She compliments her performances with innovative free improvisation, inspired by nature, society and culture, poetry, visual art, movement and melodies from traditional music from China, Balkan countries, USA and other European influences. This way, audiences may recognise beloved songs from their childhood included in one of Beers’ improvisation performances. She also enjoys breaking the construct of Western traditional concert presentations of solo piano recitals or duo evenings by intertwining solo repertoire with chamber music, improvisations and multimedia presentations.
As a soloist, and chamber musician with her Ensembles Real Ad Lib Mission (ReALM) and Ensemble Improvisation Experimentell, she curates and performs regularly in a variety of innovative concert formats and festivals around the world with musical styles ranging widely throughout the eras. The ensembles led and founded by her are interdisciplinary and multi-faceted groups of international musicians who use musical improvisation as a means of communicating empathy between each other and with audiences.
As a young pianist, Jean Beers was able to benefit from advice by some of today's greatest pianists and composers today, including pianists Yefim Bronfman, Natalia Trull, Gerhard Oppitz, Dimitri Bashkirov, and composers Michael Finnissey, Mauricio Kagel, George Crumb. She has won numerous prizes and awards since her debut with orchestra at the age of 13, including international prizes for the music of Grieg, Debussy, Rachmaninoff and the renowned artists’ prize of the city of Salzburg in 2009, which led to a performance within the world renowned Salzburg Festival which has hosted the world’s greatest musicians for the past hundred years. In the United Kingdom, she has won numerous prizes and awards as a teenager and young musician, both for her piano playing and her compositional works, including the Tim Stevenson prize, the Alan Bush prize and the Purcell orchestral piece prize, which led to her work for symphony orchestra being performed to great acclaim at the age of 17 and her string quartet being premiered at the renowned music festival State of the Nation in the same year in 2002.