Biography
Donald Betts has produced over a hundred original piano pieces, songs, and chamber works. His recent recording, Soundings: Piano Works of Donald Betts (Centaur, RC 2332), was highly recommended in the May/June 1998 American Record Guide as "seductively dreamlike and sensuous", filled with "mystery and rapture". His music has been performed in such diverse locations as Ireland, Mexico, Siberia, and Sarajevo, as well as numerous locations throughout the US. Betts made his New York piano recital debut when he was 21, performing his own music as well as works of Schumann, Liszt, and Prokofieff. Musical America cited his "tremendous technique and bravura style", and The New York Times called him a pianist of "imagination and poetic feeling" who "put his soul into his performances."
A month later he was drafted into the US. Army and spent ten months touring parts of Japan as a piano soloist with the 289th Army Band, performing Grieg, Beethoven and Gershwin. Returning to civilian life, he won the Concert Artist Guild award and presented two more NYC recitals at Town Hall and Carnegie Recital Hall. He then won a fellowship for the Indiana University School of Music.
He took a professorship at Macalester College, teaching piano and music history and philosophy. He co-founded the Macalester Trio, whose repertoire included almost all the standards, as well as numerous unusual and nearly forgotten works, and many contemporary commissons. Their recording Chamber Works by Women Composers (Vox Box CDX 5029) was one of Newsweek's ten most important recordings of 1980.
Betts is a recipient of Macalester College's Thomas Jefferson Scholar Award, and of the St. Paul Schubert Club's highest teaching award.
See Don's web page were you can download free tracks at http://innig.net/music/betts-chopin/
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