The (Continuing) Unorthodox Musical Path of Jeffrey Biegel

Most children begin to say simple words at one, simple sentences at two, and are veritable chatterboxes at three. Not so Jeffrey Biegel, who, by age three, had not spoken a single word. Obviously concerned, his parents took him to a doctor, who tried communicating with him, but to no avail. Finally, the doctor said his name very loudly several times. No reaction. The doctor then turned to his parents and said, “Your son is deaf.”

Jeffrey was indeed born 85% deaf. He could not speak and his only sense of music was vibrations he could feel through the floor. Fortunately for Jeffrey – and the music world – his deafness could be reversed. After corrective surgery, Jeffrey had a lot of catching up to do and wasted no time doing so. He was soon talking normally, but doesn’t remember the first time he actually heard music. However, when asked what it was about music that grabbed him, he said, “Music grabs you! It attracts you to it. It’s a language that you understand.”

When he began piano lessons at seven, it was clear he had both the necessary talent and determination to do well. Soon he was playing Clementi’s Sonatinas and, at ten, gave his first public performance at the Usdan Center for the Creative and Performing Arts on Long Island, where he played Chopin’s Fantaisie-Impromptu.

At 16, Jeffrey began studying with Adele Marcus, the renowned pianist and faculty member at Juilliard, and continued studying with her as an undergraduate at Juilliard after high school. He describes Marcus as “tough.” At one point, she said to him, “I know it’s in you, but I don’t know how to get it out of you.” He then realized that he was using more of his other senses to compensate for his early hearing disability and was thus more inhibited than someone who had always had use of all the senses. It was a break-through moment, and he credits Marcus with “opening his ears” to express himself through the piano. He still follows a technique that Marcus taught him, that of singing the music as he plays it. However, it wasn’t until years later that, when talking to a writer who asked him about the effects of his childhood disability on his career, Jeffrey realized he had never told Marcus about his deafness.

Because of what he calls his “reverse-Beethoven” musical career, Jeffrey has had the freedom to follow a rather unorthodox path in music. He was once told that “When you play the piano, it doesn’t sound like a piano.” Jeffrey replied that his conception and utilization of the piano is as a language. “The piano is an extension of your voice. The fingers follow the voice and the keys are just an extension of the strings.” He thus teaches his students in master classes to sing out the music and to play an imaginary piano to get a sense of the space the piece needs and the air around the notes. He finds this technique changes the way his students use their arms and fingers to create sound and helps them better hear what sounds are created in the inner mind.

Jeffrey also considers himself “a conduit between the past and the future.” He says that, because of his early disability, his whole life has been based on thinking outside the box. “Classical composers were pop writers of their day, so why not have pop writers compose classical music?” His work with popular and younger musicians is his way of keeping classical music going and making sure it never disappears – hence his collaborations with some unorthodox classical musicians, including the late Neil Sedaka, Peter Tork and Peter Schickele (P.D.Q. Bach) as well as Josh Groban, David Mller and other prominent popular musicians.

Neil Sedaka, who passed away in March, is best known for his teenage hits like “Stupid Cupid” and “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do” in the rock-and-roll years, but few know that he also trained as a classical pianist with Adele Marcus at Juilliard and was set to represent the USA at the 1966 Tchaikovsky competition in Moscow. However, Sedaka never got to compete because the Soviets had outlawed rock-and-roll as “decadent” and thus disqualified him because of his “other” life. Sedaka later returned to his classical roots and, in 2008, composed his first piano concerto, “Manhattan Intermezzo,” which he recorded in 2010; it contains “bells and whistles so it’s more like Rachmaninoff,” additions Jeffrey made to the piano part with Sedaka’s encouragement and approval.

Peter Tork is forever connected with The Monkees, the fictitious band in the 1960s TV series. Tork stated on his webpage that he met “a professional classical piano player by the name of Jeffrey Biegel.” After an interesting conversation about classical music, they kept in touch; then Jeffrey asked Tork to compose something for piano and orchestra to be performed with Orchestra Kentucky in 2015. At first Tork declined, thinking he could never write anything “serious.” “But some ideas began to roll around in my head,” he wrote, “Lo and behold, strange stuff that I liked emerged…and it was a tremendous thrill to hear what I’d written performed by about 65 musicians…all at once!”

In 1998, Jeffrey took another huge step outside the traditional classical music box. He realized that smaller orchestras can rarely afford to fund commissions, but a group of smaller orchestras could each contribute a portion of the necessary funds and all could then showcase the new work, thus eliminating the “second performance” problem Maestro Eckerling mentions in his letter in our April Keynotes. (Once a single new piece has been premiered by the single orchestra that commissioned it, when and where will it be performed again?) Jeffrey’s first commission under what has become known as the “consortium model” was Ellen Taaffe Zwillich’s “Millenium Fantasy” (2000), with twenty-seven orchestras paying into the pot and subsequently performing the piece. Jeffrey had broken open the gates that had constrained commissioning and invited a wide swath of orchestras to participate.

Jeffrey last performed with the ESO in January of 2020, our last live concert before the pandemic lockdown, when the music world had to find other creative ways to connect with its audiences. Given the dramatic, even drastic, effects of the pandemic on the classical music world, Jeffrey wanted to “do something for orchestras and the world after Covid,” and his main “pandemic project” did just that. “I wanted to make a bold statement about strength in America,” he said, “and strength in American orchestras, a statement to help people come together in unity and identify who they are.” To accomplish this goal, Jeffrey formed the “Rhapsody National Initiative,” a consortium of 50 orchestras from the 50 States to celebrate the centennial of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” which burst onto the world’s stage in 1924.

Jeffrey first approached Peter Boyer, a composer who wants to affect American music and whose works such as Ellis Island: The Dream of America and The Dream Lives On: A Portrait of the Kennedy Brothers embody his belief in the import of music to reflect the history of America and the evolution of the country. Not surprising for a Gershwin centenary commission, Boyer at first refused, saying he didn’t want to be a second-rate Gershwin. (This was a nod to Maurice Ravel’s refusal to give lessons to Gershwin in the mid-1920s, reportedly saying, “Why do you want to be a second-rate Ravel when you could be a first-rate Gershwin?!”) Jeffrey persisted, however, and Boyer finally agreed to compose “Rhapsody in Red, White and Blue.” Boyer’s composition pays some homage to Gershwin in influences and what Jeffrey calls “hat tips,” such as an occasional Charleston rhythm, but not in the music itself. Boyer is definitely being a first-rate Boyer and not a second-rate Gershwin!

Jeffrey’s enthusiasm about “Rhapsody in Red, White and Blue” is evident. “I wanted a piece about the symbol of the American flag, to reflect America as a place where people have thrived, and to keep it going. Freedom is fragile. It’s a relationship, like a marriage. You have to work at it to keep it alive. This music rises above audience to show something greater than us and how we need to work hard to keep it safe. It’s a laser beam to the American soul.”

Since the premiere of “Rhapsody in Red, White and Blue” in 2023 with the Utah Symphony, Jeffrey’s “pandemic project” has far surpassed his initial expectations. Sixty-eight orchestras are now participating in the consortium and, in a pleasant plot twist for the orchestras, none has had to contribute any money to the project. Jeffrey managed to raise all of the funds from other sources. In celebration of the 2024 Gershwin centenary, and not without a ha’penny’s worth of irony, Jeffrey performed “Rhapsody in Red, White and Blue” (without an Oxford comma) in a recording with the London Symphony Orchestra. We of course had to ask why such an unabashedly American celebratory work wasn’t recorded with an American orchestra. Jeffrey replied that Peter Boyer already had relationships with the LSO and that the recording would be less expensive in London. Then he added with delightful laugh, “I raised the money – and Peter spent it!”

Thank you, Jeffrey, for remaining such a wonderfully talented, imaginative and “unorthodox” pianist! Welcome back to our stage!