Jeffrey Biegel

Jeffrey Biegel built a durable career in an era when sudden visibility often proved fleeting for performers. Engagements at Avery Fisher Hall and collaborations with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Boston Pops formed key milestones, while television slots on Good Morning America further extended his reach. In July 1997 he became the first pianist to deliver a live recital over the Internet, and that year he also introduced the original 1924 score of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with the Boston Pops in a performance documented by ABC television, CNN, and NPR. His expansive catalogue spans concertos and solo works by Mozart, Beethoven, and Rachmaninov alongside many contemporary figures such as Keith Emerson and William Bolcom, encompassing more than two dozen commissioned pieces. Biegel additionally works as a composer, music editor, and instructor.

Surgical intervention at age three restored Biegel’s hearing and speech. He trained at Juilliard under the noted Adele Marcus. First prize at the William Kappell International Piano Competition arrived in 1985, followed four years later by the top award at the Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud International Competition in Paris. His debut recording, César Cui’s 25 Preludes, Op. 64, appeared on Marco Polo in 1993 and was later reissued by Naxos. The Internet recital helped broaden his audience and prompted an Angelok label CD. In 2000 he premiered Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s Millennium Fantasy with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra after a two-year commissioning initiative involving multiple ensembles. Further prominent introductions included Lowell Liebermann’s Concerto No. 3, first performed with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra on May 12, 2006.

That same year Biegel premiered and recorded the infrequently heard Leroy Anderson Piano Concerto, released in 2008 on an all-Anderson Naxos album that drew strong praise. In 2010 he formed the chamber group Trio21 with violinist Kinga Augustyn and cellist Robert deMaine. Chosen as the first artist signed to the Steinway & Sons label, he issued Bach on a Steinway that year. Composers who have written expressly for him include Zwilich, Richard Danielpour (Mirrors, for piano and orchestra), and Jeremy Lubbock (Moods, for piano and strings).

Among Biegel’s own creations are the choral work The World in Our Hands, written with his son Craig at age nine, and Three Reflections: Freedom (JFK), Justice (RBG), Equality (MLK), premiered in concerto form in 2022. In 2024 he appeared on A Dream So Bright: Choral Music of Jake Runestad, performing that composer’s Dreams of the Fallen with the True Concord Voices and Orchestra. Biegel serves on the piano faculty at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music.