13-Year Old Emily Bear is Already a World-Class Pianist and Composer
At just thirteen years old, Emily Bear of Rockford, Illinois, is a young woman in charge of her music. She writes it reads it, she knows what she’s doing and she wants others to fall in line.
At two years old she started fiddling around with a piano.She started piano lessons just before she turned five, and started writing her first real songs at age six.
“This one I wrote also when I was six, and I wrote it for my first piano teacher when he got cancer,” she said.
Her musically talented Grandmother recognized her talent, Mom and Dad got her going and the rest is history… now she is sought after to play around the world.
“When I write music, I don’t know I get inspired by anything from what’s the weather like or dogs or people, something that happened or anything and then I just play.”
She wrote a song for Quincy Jones on an air plane on her way to meet him in Los Angeles, it’s called “Q.” Jones fell in love with it, and her, and is now her friend an producer.
“He teaches me so much, not just about music, but about life and being a good person as well and when I’m with him, the age disappears, and it just like two musicians talking and collaborating.”
Her album “Diversity” is also the title of the song she wrote for the Dali Lama which she has played for him.
“Sometimes I might play one section and then that’s it and then maybe a couple of hours or couple of days later I get a middle section and I put those two together, sometimes it’s in one chunk and sometimes it’s in a few chunks, but usually comes out in one track
Emily has been wowing crowds since she was tiny, but remains humble.
I’m glad that they love the music and it inspires them and they want to go home and they want to start playing music.
To watch her play is to watch a master at work, from classical to jazz and everything in between. Emily goes to a place most of us could never imagine and the music just pours out.
The memorizing isn’t actually the hard part like the concertos that I have played before, I usually learn and memorize a piece in just a couple weeks, but it’s actually detailing and technique part takes a while.”
“They’re all so different, but I would have to say, writing music and playing my own music is probably my favourite because, it’s so free you can do whatever the heck you want.”
“I love film scoring and I would love to be a film scorer and I would also love to orchestrate and play with symphonies and hear my music being played by other people.”