Deborah Ingram Cleaver holds a Master of Music degree in piano performance from Boston University where she studied with the renowned pianist and pedagogue Leonard Shure. After finishing her degree, she worked closely with Shure as his teaching assistant at New England Conservatory. She inherited his passionately held view that the coupling of performance and pedagogy was essential for both endeavors, and this has informed her professional direction and philosophy through the years.
Ms. Cleaver has also spent many years studying the performance practice of the Baroque and Classic periods with such luminaries as Sandra Rosenblum, Edward Parmentier, and Elisabeth Wright. Her broad interests have resulted in lectures for universities and music teachers’ organizations, ranging from the expressive aspects of Baroque performance practice to the correlation between Romantic literature and music, as well as presentations on the Taubman approach.
Ms. Cleaver began studying the Taubman approach in 1997 after attending a workshop in Portland, OR conducted by senior faculty members of the Taubman Institute. Seeing the amazing facility of people studying the approach convinced her to begin retraining. Her teachers have included Edna Golandsky, John Bloomfield, and Robert Durso. She has been a faculty member of the Golandsky Institute since 2005, and is certified at the Master Level, the institute’s highest level of certification.
An avid performer, she has appeared with the Makrokosmos Project, the Fear No Music Ensemble, the DeRosa Chamber Players, Cascadia Composers, and Friends of Rain. Her performances have been aired on the classical music programs PLAYED IN OREGON and All Classical.