John Milbauer, DePaul School of Music dean, identified Sara Davis Buechner as one of the great pianists of our time. Buechner’s tremendous career showcases her intelligence, power, sense of rhythm, and variety of repertoire.
Starting at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024, Buechner will be playing a concert at Holtschneider Performance Center in DePaul’s School of Music — the recital program is free for all DePaul faculty and staff as well as students from any university.
“We are bringing her in, first and foremost, because she is a wonderful pianist,” Milbauer said. “(Buechner) is a great storyteller. I mean, literally, she will tell stories about the music she’s playing from the stage.”
Buechner said she often played romantic music of well-known piano composers like Chopin, Liszt and Brahms on recitals, but also likes to feature lesser-celebrated composers like Antonín Dvořák.
“His four-movement Suite Op. 52 has some wonderfully rhetorical writing,” Buechner said. “I’m particularly fond of the final movement, a dark and reflective piece that always makes me think of autumnal moods and hues.”
The second half of the program, Buechner said, is a salute to the American musical scene of the turn of the last century. Compositions from the United States’ first famous classical composer, Edward MacDowell, will be featured.
Buechner will end her performance with a soloist piano version of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.”
“It’s thrilling that she really is expanding repertoire and bringing music to life that otherwise exists just on paper,” Milbauer said. “It’s wonderful for students at DePaul. It’s wonderful for everyone to hear these pieces that no one’s heard before, that she champions so beautifully.”
In addition to her renowned work as a solo pianist, Buechner has also become an advocate for LGBTQ+ individuals, speaking at events and openly sharing her experience as a transgender woman.
Buechner, in her mid-thirties, began her transition from male to female. A choice, Buechner wrote in “A Transgender Note,” that was deferred from fear of professional ramifications and discrimination.
“I met David Buechner in the 1990s,” Milbauer said. “It was in the late 90s when there was this transition where David became Sara. I saw she lost concerts, she lost management. Yamaha stood by her — her piano affiliation with a great instrument maker, Yamaha. But not everybody did stand by Sara.”
As written in “A Transgender Note,” she made her second debut with three sold-out performances of the two Chopin Piano Concertos in September of 1998 as “Sara Davis Buechner.”
“To see Sara having this wonderful career is heartening,” Milbauer said. “It’s a testament to the human spirit, perseverance and focusing on what’s important — what’s important here is fantastic music played brilliantly by a wonderful pianist.”
Buechner’s work as a pianist is an extension of her life, Milbauer said, and that is a celebration of the human spirit; seeing someone go through something that is so painful and then come out on the other end — it’s a party.
“It is so important that we bring people into work with our students and to perform for our students that are of the highest caliber,” Jacqueline Kelly-McHale, associate dean for Academic Affairs, said. “(Sara) brings a lot of understanding of the highs and lows of the performance field. She is someone who has had an incredible career, but has also faced an incredible number of roadblocks, and has navigated them beautifully.”
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