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The American pianist and music pedagogue, Douglas Buys, played the piano since he was 7. From age 13 to 16 he studied piano with Huguette van Ackere, a graduate of the Royal Conservatory in Brussels, where she was a winner of the grand prix. He also played organ, clarinet, bassoon, cello and saxophone. He studied at the Beacon High School in Beacon, New York (Class of June 1972). In March-April 1971, at age 16, he was piano soloist with the Orchestra in Progress, the treaining orchestra for the Hudson Valley Philharmonic. As a teenager he was sponsored by the French government to study in the summer of 1971 with the world-famous pianist Robert Casadesus and his son, Jean, and with Nadia Boulanger in Paris and Fontainebleau. He received his Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees from the Juilliard School of Music in New York (Class of 1979) as a scholarship student of Rudolf Firkusny. Other teachers were John Perry, Lilian Kallir and German Diez.
Douglas Buys has appeared in recitals and with orchestras in the USA and Europe, most notably in two-piano repertoire with Firkusny. Recent concerts have taken him to summer festivals in California and Vermont, and he has taught and given master-classes and recitals at Humboldt State University, San Francisco Conservatory, and University of Idaho.
Douglas Buys was on the faculty of North Carolina School of the Arts, Duke University. Currenly (2009) he teaches at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. In 1988, he received the Presidential Certificate for Excellence in Teaching at a National Press Club ceremony with George Bush. |
