ABOUT | Clare Longendyke

When pianist Clare Longendyke interprets Haydn, she brings the composer’s dancing jubilation and playful sense of humor to life. When she performs Debussy’s music, her textural layering, shimmering filigree, and flexible timing paint a vivid musical story. And when she performs the music of today’s living composers, her approach embraces the rich history of the piano’s past while shining light onto what is novel and pioneering. Clare Longendyke’s artistry is defined by her relentless pursuit of the quintessential sound and character for every piece, combined with an honest and sincere interpretation of the composer’s intentions from her individual perspective.

Clare radiates a contagious commitment to the music of our time, and her programming celebrates works by favorite composers of the past—Robert and Clara Schumann, Beethoven, and Ravel, to name a few—while creating space for those that are paving the way towards classical music’s more inclusive future. One of the highlights of her career has been to work with living composers to commission solo piano pieces, and she relishes the opportunity to put her stamp on new works that will go on to be staples in the pianist’s repertoire for centuries.

A lust for exploring the unfamiliar is just one of the reasons that Clare is so in love with her work as a concert pianist. A world traveler, she has lived and studied on both American coasts and abroad, earning degrees at Boston University’s College of Fine Arts, Paris’s École Normale de Musique, and the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where she earned her Master’s and Doctor of Music degrees. An ardent Francophile and fluent French speaker, she received the Fulbright-Harriet Hale Woolley Award in the Arts to study music in Paris in 2009.

Clare sees performance as an extension of her role as an ambassador for classical music in today’s cultural world. The connections she makes in classrooms, on concert stages, and everywhere in between help to foster a greater sense of community for the classical music field that she cares about so deeply.