David Korevaar

David Korevaar is a versatile pianist who has emphasized contemporary music and chamber music in his recordings and concerts. He is also an influential educator.

Korevaar was born on July 25, 1962, in Madison, Wisconsin, but grew up in La Jolla, California. At six, he began taking piano lessons in nearby San Diego; he also studied the flute as a youth. By age 11, he had decided on a career in music, and he settled on the piano three years later when he met the virtuoso <a href="spotify:artist:12Fk4SuKXPe97FaSVD6WHK">Earl Wild</a> and became his student. Korevaar attended the Juilliard School in New York, studying piano with <a href="spotify:artist:12Fk4SuKXPe97FaSVD6WHK">Wild</a> and composition with <a href="spotify:artist:2PxsMrjxQdySklBP1NkO5g">David Diamond</a>. He earned a doctorate at Juilliard in 1983 and continued studying piano with Paul Doguereau. He made his debut at New York's Town Hall in 1985 and has since toured the Americas, Europe, East Asia, and Australia as a recitalist and concerto soloist. He also toured and taught in Kazakhstan and Tajikistan under the auspices of the U.S. State Department’s Cultural Envoy program. His programming emphasizes contemporary music, and he has championed such composers as <a href="spotify:artist:1nBFYjnV0WPd4AmkrsiZei">Aaron Jay Kernis</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:6pEGmbFzId5sPVywqzZQdy">Harrison Birtwistle</a>, and <a href="spotify:artist:5O7LlX7WMkaqp4NfLzbbn7">Lowell Lieberman</a>; he has collaborated with and recorded the latter extensively. An enthusiastic chamber music player, Korevaar has co-founded three groups, the Prometheus Piano Quartet, the Boulder Piano Quartet, and Hexagon, a piano-and-winds ensemble. After teaching for several years at the Westport School of Music in Connecticut, he joined the faculty of the University of Colorado in 2000. By the late 2010s, he had risen to the rank of Distinguished Professor, and he was also honored by the university in 2016 as a Distinguished Research Lecturer.

Korevaar has a large recording catalog as a soloist and chamber player, often performing contemporary music. In the 2000s and 2010s, he often recorded for the <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22MSR+Classics%22">MSR Classics</a> label, where he issued several albums of <a href="spotify:artist:5O7LlX7WMkaqp4NfLzbbn7">Lieberman</a>'s music, and for <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Naxos%22">Naxos</a>, where he recorded an album of violin sonatas by Paul Juon in 2019.