Steven Doane

Recognized by colleagues as one the finest cellists before the public, Steven Doane has reconciled the competing requirements of technique and expression as have few practitioners of any instrument, cello or otherwise. Driven to share his gifts and insights with students, he has chosen to devote as much attention to a university teaching career as to a performing one. While the immediate loss is to the public, which hears him less often than it might wish, the longterm gain is to budding artists who derive far more than technical grounding from his tutelage -- they are supported and encouraged to become, like their teacher, complete and emotionally fulfilling musicians. Born in New Jersey, Doane moved with his parents to Michigan at age two and considers himself a Michigander. His father was an engineer by profession and a musician by avocation. Doane began music lessons at seven, studying the piano. In the public schools, Doane was introduced to the cello and, after brief study of the oboe, he determined at age 11 that his ultimate choice would be the former instrument. He has acknowledged, however, that piano instruction from Shirley Matthews, who had taught at Peabody Conservatory, held him in good stead in the development of his musical understanding. Among the cello pedagogues with whom Doane studied were Douglas Marsh of the Detroit Symphony, Richard Kapusinsky (Oberlin), and Bernie Greenhouse, under whose guidance he completed his master's degree at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Another seminal teacher was Jane Cowan, the iconoclastic director of the International Cello Center in Great Britain. Doane joined the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra as principal cellist in 1976 and later served in the same capacity in Rochester, NY, beginning in 1981. During the 1985-1986 season, Doane was a member of the New Arts Trio in a four-year residency at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music in Milwaukee. Doane is professor of cello at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester and a recipient of the Eisenhardt Award for Excellence in Teaching. His instructional prowess has also won him the Piatigorsky Commendation by the New England Conservatory. A former associate in cello at London's Royal College of Music, Doane has also given numerous master classes throughout America and England and has been engaged as guest instructor at the International Cello Festival in Manchester, England. Additionally, he has served as a guest teacher at most of the major music colleges in Great Britain. Comparing the contrasting styles of English and American cello instruction, Doane notes that whereas the English teach ensemble playing from an early age, American pedagogues tend to emphasize technical brilliance. Doane's performing career has taken him throughout North America and Europe, including Scandinavia. A recital at London's famed Wigmore Hall elicited the following remarks in The Strad: "The quality of his playing continually aspired toward genuine greatness. He treads the tightrope between technical rigor and total expressiveness, never sacrificing one for the other." Doane is a regular soloist at numerous international festivals extending from the Pacific to the British Isles. Respected by critics as well as fellow musicians and audiences, Doane was awarded the French Diapason d'Or for his Bridge Records disc holding the complete works for cello and piano by Fauré. A subsequent recording devoted to works for cello and piano by Frank Bridge and his pupil Benjamin Britten won a 1996 NAIRD award.
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