Stewart Goodyear

He never knew his father, as he passed away from cancer a month before Stewart was born. But Goodyear grew up with his father’s LPs which included the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Santana in addition to Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Czechovski symphonies. He says that hearing Beethoven is what compelled him to be a classical artist.

Goodyear was aware of the piano at age three and by four was playing by ear on a toy piano. After the family bought a full-size instrument, he took lessons and learned general music as a student at an all-boy Toronto choir school. Goodyear graduated from the Glenn Gould School at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto when he was 15. There he studied with James Anagnoson, who subsequently became dean of the school. Goodyear attended the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where he studied with Leon Fleisher, Gary Graffman, and Claude Frank. He attended Juilliard School in New York where he studied with Oxana Yablonskaya and earned a master’s in piano performance.

Goodyear typically meditates for half an hour before performing. In addition, he has a few pre-concert rituals such as reading a pocket-sized biography on Beethoven or reviewing the cover to the Beatles’ album “With the Beatles” before performing Gershwin.

Stewart Goodyear (born February 1978) is a Canadian concert pianist and composer. He is best known for performing all 32 Beethoven sonatas in a single day, a feat he has done at Koerner Hall, McCarter Theatre, the Mondavi Center, and the AT&T Performing Arts Center.