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Lembit Beecher is a composer, conductor and pianist who recently graduated with his D.M.A. in composition from the University of Michigan, studying with Evan Chambers and Bright Sheng.  He earned his B.A. from Harvard College, studying composition with Kurt Stallmann and Bernard Rands  and his M.M. from Rice University, studying with Karim Al-Zand and Pierre Jalbert.  Continually trying to expand his musical and artistic vocabulary, Lembit has studied jazz piano, modern dance, ethnomusicology and participated in workshops and master classes with Stephen Schwartz, Evelyn Glennie, Bobby McFerrin and Paul Berliner.  Born of Estonian and American parents, Lembit grew up under the redwoods in Santa Cruz, California, a few miles from the wild Pacific.  Since then he has lived in Boston, Houston, Ann Arbor and Berlin.  This varied background has made him particularly sensitive to place, ecology and the strong emotional relationships that people forge with patterns in nature. He is also interested in memory and the way people tell stories, through songs, sounds, gestures and words. During the summer of 2001 he received a Radcliffe Traveling Fellowship from Harvard to study folk music in his mother's homeland of Estonia and during the fall of 2005 he undertook a fieldwork project at TC’s Speakeasy Bar and Grill in Ypsilanti, Michigan, writing an ethnography of open mic performances.  He has had works performed by the New York Youth Symphony with Percussionist James Deitz, the Cabrillo Music Festival Orchestra, the Shepherd School Symphony Orchestra, the UNL Symphony Orchestra, the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, pianist Brian Connelly, the Sospiro Wind Quintet, the AUROS Group for New Music and the Tosca String Quartet among others.  For 2008-2009, Lembit was a fellow at the University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities, where he wrote And Then I Remember, a multi-media, documentary oratorio based on the World War II stories of his grandmother.  And Then I Remember was premiered on March 27 and 28 in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  Lembit was appointed a Visiting Assistant Professor at Denison University for the fall of 2009. 

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