‘Musicfest junkie’ returns to roots

Stephen Beus knows how important Musicfest Northwest can be to an aspiring performer.

Beus, who grew up on an apple orchard near Othello, Wash., was a regular participant in the competition for young musicians back when it was known as the Greater Spokane Music and Allied Arts Festival.

Now, at age 26, he’s gone on to win two international piano competitions, release a pair of CDs and be named a Steinway Artist by the piano manufacturer.

Beus returns to Spokane to give a recital tonight at the Bing Crosby Theater on the eve of this year’s Musicfest Northwest. Proceeds will go to the Musicfest scholarship fund.

“I guess you could call me a Musicfest junkie,” Beus (rhymes with “puse”) said in a telephone interview earlier this week. “I began coming to Musicfest when I was 9 or 10 and kept entering until I was 17.”

He made his debut in Walla Walla at age 9, playing Mozart’s Concerto in A major, K. 488.

“I started lessons when I was 5,” Beus says. “I was the fourth of eight children and most of my brothers and sisters started piano, too, but I was the only one who developed an obsession with the piano. The rest of us went in other directions. Maybe I was the black sheep.”

When his family bought a grand piano, the piano tuner from Walla Walla suggested Whitman College professor Leonard Richter as a teacher.

“Dr. Richter has certainly been the most influential person in my development as a musician – my musical hero, really,” Beus says.

“I can’t even name what one or two things he taught me that were most important; he just gave me everything I know as a musician, basically. And I still take lessons from him when I am home.”

Beus interrupted his studies for two years of mission work in Finland.

“There was not a lot of time to practice,” he says, “but I did get to play recitals and with orchestras in Finland. So it was surprisingly easy to get going again when I got home.”

He then moved to New York and finished a master’s degree at the Guilford School of Music, studying with Robert McDonald. He is continuing studies and performances at The Juilliard School for his Artist’s Diploma, Juilliard’s highest performance award.

The recently wed Beus soon will move to Provo, Utah, where his wife, a soprano, is completing a degree in vocal performance at Brigham Young University.

“When she finishes,” he says, “we will probably move back to New York. It’s an exciting place, and easier to keep up a career there.”

In addition to his years of participation in Musicfest, Beus has won an imposing number of national and international piano competitions, taking first prizes in the Music Teachers National Association Collegiate Competition in 2003; the 2004 Kosciuszko Foundation Chopin Competition in New York; the 2004 Gina Bachauer Competition in Provo; and the 2006 Vendome Competition in Lisbon, Portugal.

In March, he toured with the Philharmonic Orchestra of Morocco, appearing in Casablanca and Marrakech, and has a China tour scheduled for June.

Beus has recorded music by Samuel Barber and Walla Walla-born composer Marion Bauer for the Endeavor label, and works by Charles T. Griffes and Alexandere Scriabin on Harmonia Mundi.