The Billmeyer Duo will perform a program of music for piano and organ for the Region VI Convention

Committed to the performance and commissioning of music for organ and piano duo, The Billmeyer Duo blends the talents and musicianship of two of Minnesota’s premiere keyboard artists. Both Susan and Dean Billmeyer are well-known to audiences in the upper Midwest from numerous performances as soloists, chamber musicians, and with varied ensembles. One of the region’s strongest advocates for new chamber music, Dr. Susan Billmeyer has performed throughout the U.S. as a recitalist and chamber musician. Susan appears regularly with the Minnesota Orchestra, having served two seasons as the orchestra’s principal pianist. With the orchestra, she has appeared with a number of prominent conductors, and performed Stravinsky’s Petrushka on the orchestra’s 2006 European tour in Edinburgh and Helsinki under music director Osmo Vänskä. Susan has also appeared with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, with members of the Chicago Symphony, the Richmond Symphony, and the Dale Warland Singers. She holds degrees in piano from Oberlin Conservatory, Indiana University, and the University of Minnesota. Her commitment to bringing compositions of recent times to a wider audience has led to numerous world premieres and collaborations, including tours and guest performances with ICE (the Intergalactic Contemporary Ensemble), Zeitgeist, Present Music, the Indiana University New Music Ensemble, and CURRENTS, a contemporary music group based in Richmond, Virginia. In Los Angeles with ICE, she world premiered Butterfly Effect, a concerto for piano and chamber orchestra, written for her by Minneapolis composer Edie Hill. In addition to her musical training, Susan also holds a degree in East Asian Studies from Oberlin College, and is a specialist in Japanese language and literature. This specialization led her to pursue research on the chamber music of Toru Takemitsu. A prominent recent recording appears on a collection of works by the American composer John Morrison, released in March of 2003. Dr. Dean Billmeyer is University Organist at the University of Minnesota. He studied at the Eastman School of Music, Southern Methodist University in Dallas, and at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Vienna, as a Fulbright Scholar. He joined the faculty at the University of Minnesota in 1982 following completion of his doctorate at Eastman. Winner of the First Dublin International Organ Festival Competition in 1980, Dean’s performances have been consistently praised by juries and critics in the United States and abroad. A Fellow of the American Guild of Organists, he was the winner of the AGO’s S. Lewis Elmer Award, given for the highest scores in the nation on the Guild’s Professional Certification examinations, in two consecutive years. Having completed twenty-five years as head of the organ program at the University of Minnesota, Dean is acknowledged as one of the most highly respected teachers in the Midwestern United States. His teaching and research interests include theory, counterpoint, and the pedagogy of memorization. He was recently on leave from the University to pursue research in cognitive theory and memorization in performance. The former Region VI Councillor for the AGO, he now serves on the AGO Committee on Professional Certification. Dean has performed regularly with the Minnesota Orchestra as organist and harpsichordist since 2000. He completed a recital tour of Norway in 2006, and also performed at the University of Minnesota’s Elliott Carter Festival.

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