Bernadette Speach

Bernadette Speach
Bernadette Speach’s work as a composer embraces a variety of styles, and includes solo, chamber and orchestral works. Ms. Speach and poet/writer Thulani Davis have worked together extensively since 1986. Telepathy Suite, their first collaborative settings, were released on the CD, Without Borders (mode 16), which also included chamber works by Ms. Speach performed by the Bowery Ensemble, Anthony de Mare, Leonard Krech, Michael Pugliese, Jeffrey Schanzer and Jan Williams.

She has performed as pianist with her husband Jeffrey Schanzer as the Schanzer/Speach Duo across the United States, in Puerto Rico, and Europe. Their first CD, Dualities, was released on the Mode/Avant Label in 1992.

Bernadette Speach was born on the first day of 1948 in Syracuse, New York. Ms. Speach received her Ph.D. in Music Composition from SUNY-Buffalo where she studied with Morton Feldman and Lejaren Hiller. She was a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Composers Fellowship in 1992. In the same year she received a commission through the American Composers Forum with funding by The Jerome Foundation to compose for the ensemble Zeitgeist, as well as commissioning funds from The New York State Council on the Arts through MusicVistas, Inc. to continue her collaboration with Thulani Davis. Ms. Speach was a Music Composition Fellow through the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship program in 1998-1999.

Through her efforts as an administrator, fund-raiser, presenter and educator Ms. Speach continues to bring the work of a broad range of contemporary artists to audiences in the New York metropolitan area and beyond.