American keyboardist (1925–2020)
Joan Benson (October 9, 1925 – January 1, 2020) was an American keyboard player who specialized in the clavichord and fortepiano.
Biography.
Benson was of Swedish descent. Born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, she spent her childhood in New Orleans, where she attended Metairie Park Country Day School, one of the first progressive schools in the South. Its emphasis on creativity encouraged her talents in music, painting and poetry.
At sixteen, she studied with pianist-composer Percy Grainger at Interlochen's Summer Music Camp. At seventeen, she attended Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Massachusetts, studying with Boris Godowsky and Melville Smith. It was here she first heard a clavichord, where Erwin Bodky, a faculty member, played several preludes and fugues by J. S. Bach.
Educated at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (Bachelor of Music, Master of Music (1951) and Indiana University School of Music (1953) studying under Anis Fuleihan, she received instruction in Europe from Edwin Fischer, Guido Agosti, Olivier Messiaen, Viola Thern, Fritz Neumeyer, Ruggero Gerlin, and Macário Santiago Kastner before returning to the United States in 1960 to pursue dual careers as a concert keyboardist and university professor. She debuted on the clavichord at the Carmel Bach Festival in 1963 and went on to perform at many concerts in the United States, Europe, and the Far East. From 1968 through 1976, she taught at Stanford University until joining the faculty at the University of Oregon in Eugene, where she taught through 1987. In 1980, she also joined the faculty of the Aston Magna Music Festival in Massachusetts. Among her varied interests was Buddhist meditation. She has been credited with helping to revive interest in the fortepiano and the work of C. P. E. Bach.
Benson died on January 1, 2020, at the age of 94.
References.
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