About Me
Beatriz de Mello comes from a diverse background in music and has long been established as a keyboard performer, composer and educator. Equally comfortable in many styles, such as Jazz, Gospel, CCM and Brazilian music, she brings a dazzling inventiveness, as well as a rich and unique harmonic language, into her work. Her training in Jazz includes extensive studies with pianist Donald Brown, as well as masterclasses with Herbie Hancock. Her style in classical composition has been compared to the works of Britten, Gershwin and Poulenc.Highlight performances of her classical music include the premiere of the opera scene Love’s Labours Lost at the CUNY Graduate Center, May 2003; a participation in the concert The Music of Thea Musgrave and her Circle, Elebash Hall, New York, April 27, 2001; and a showcase of the chamber piece Wisdom Calls at the Gamper Festival of Contemporary Music, Bowdoin Summer Music Festival, Maine, July 2000, directed by Jeff Milarsky. Beatriz has written for the ballet, in collaboration with choreographer Miriam Barbosa, a member of the Martha Graham Group. She is the recipient of the Brunswick Composition Award and Kozel Recording Award, the latter having subsidized a recording of the Idyllic Songs for mezzo-soprano and instruments. A Ph.D. candidate at the Graduate Center (City University of New York), she has studied with David del Tredici, Bruce Saylor, and Thea Musgrave.
Beatriz has served as faculty of Nyack College, Manhattan Campus, as a Professor of piano and Twentieth Century Music History. At the Thurnauer School of Music, Tenafly, New Jersey, she taught composition as well as theory/musicianship classes. Her self-published workbook, Theory Trek©, is widely used by the musicianship faculty of that school.
Extremely active in the Christian music scene as a producer and arranger, she has collaborated with a number of artists and churches, most recently with the late Pastor Moyses Malafaya: As a memorial to this wonderful singer and preacher, a collection of Christmas carols, contextualized for a modern Christian audience, will be recorded by various singers later this year.
