Barbara Shearer (September 16, 1936, in

Ottawa, Illinois Ottawa is a city in LaSalle County, Illinois, United States, and its county seat. It is located at the confluence of the navigable Fox River (Illinois River tributary), Fox River and Illinois River, the latter being a conduit for river barges and ...

– December 6, 2005) was an American

pianist A pianist ( , ) is a musician who plays the piano. A pianist's repertoire may include music from a diverse variety of styles, such as traditional classical music, jazz piano, jazz, blues piano, blues, and popular music, including rock music, ...

and

pedagogue Pedagogy (), most commonly understood as the approach to teaching, is the theory and practice of learning, and how this process influences, and is influenced by, the social, political, and psychological development of learners. Pedagogy, taken ...

at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

Early life and education

Shearer spent her childhood in the rural

Midwest The Midwestern United States (also referred to as the Midwest, the Heartland or the American Midwest) is one of the four census regions defined by the United States Census Bureau. It occupies the northern central part of the United States. It ...

. She attended

Carthage College Carthage College is a private college in Kenosha, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1847, it is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Carthage awards bachelor's degrees with majors in more than 40 subject areas and maste ...

for two years, then

Wittenberg University Wittenberg University (officially Wittenberg College) is a private liberal arts college in Springfield, Ohio. It has 1,326 full-time students drawn from 33 states and 9 foreign countries. Wittenberg University is associated with the Evangelical ...

in Ohio, where she graduated with a bachelor's degree in music. On the advice of her teachers, she went to

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

in 1958 to study piano with Leonard Shure, whom she later followed to

Zurich Zurich (; ) is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. , the municipality had 448,664 inhabitants. The ...

and

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

. A later influence was

Karl Ulrich Schnabel Karl Ulrich Schnabel (August 6, 1909 – August 27, 2001) was an Austrian pianist. Schnabel was the son of pianist Artur Schnabel and operatic contralto and lieder singer Therese Behr and elder brother of the American actor Stefan Schnabel. An i ...

, from whom she received valuable coaching and with whom she taught as a colleague. In 1963 Shearer was about to take a teaching job in New York, but one of her teachers in Ohio dissuaded her, offering to buy her a bus ticket to San Francisco instead. She did graduate work at the

,Obituary in th
''San Francisco Chronicle''
by Joshua Kosman, 17 December 2005. and in 1964 married singer and composer

Allen Shearer Allen Raymond Shearer (born October 5, 1943, in Seattle, Washington) is an American composer and baritone. Life Shearer’s early musical experiences were as a singer; the majority of his works are for the voice or voices, with a later emphasis ...

. In 1978 she joined the performance faculty at UC Berkeley, where she taught until shortly before her death.

References

1936 births 2005 deaths University of California, Berkeley faculty Carthage College alumni Wittenberg University alumni People from Ottawa, Illinois 20th-century American musicians {{educationist-stub