Donna Stoering, concert pianist and mezzo/contalto soloist, is of Austrian-German and French descent, entered Mills College Music School in California at the age of five, studying piano and composition with Joyce Grantham, a student of Darius Milhaud. From the age of twelve she was a frequent piano performer on radio/TV stations, playing her own compositions as well as classical repertoire, and by the age of thirteen she was composing, producing, and singing in her own original musicals that were staged in the California Bay Area. Donna first sang on television at the age of fifteen, but she credits a lot of her “vocal training by osmosis” to the many times that she was asked to play the piano accompaniments for famous opera singers who were touring across the USA.
Completing her B.A. and M.A. degrees in music by the age of nineteen, she was awarded a Marshall Scholarship from the British Government in order to reside in the UK, teach at universities there, give guest-artist lectures at Oxford and Cambridge, and compose choral works for their great choirs and cathedrals. But while still on the Marshall Scholarship a concert career intervened and she began performing throughout Europe, while researching the Mozart piano concerti and writing new cadenzas for them. By the age of 23 she found herself directing musicals and opera events in London, conducting choirs, adjudicating international competitions and festivals, and teaching voice and piano lessons throughout both the USA and Europe, while touring worldwide as soloist with orchestras in piano concerti and vocal/choral works. Her first recording, an all-Debussy collection, received a Grammy Award nomination, and she has since performed/recorded live with the national orchestras of France, Panama, Ukraine, the Republic of Georgia, and the Netherlands.

Composers worldwide continue to create new works for Donna to premiere and record. She has given master-classes in performance for the graduate students at Juilliard and other major music conservatories in Germany, Norway, Hong Kong, Turkmenistan, Britain, Russia, Philippines, Italy, Austria, and Latvia, and has been named “Artist in Residence” to Oxford University (St. Edmund Hall). The late maestro Sir Georg Solti recommended her to music festivals and record labels internationally, and due to his encouragement, she founded Listen for Life, a global music and media organization that is creating a worldwide alternative to MTV and helping the performers of all musical styles/genres in some 40+ countries at present.

While based in Italy for four years Ms Stoering was invited to coach opera singers of the La Scala and Munich opera houses, conduct choirs, and perform both as mezzo/contralto soloist and as a concert pianist on television, radio and music festivals/concert series worldwide. Based once again in the USA, she has now performed as concert soloist (and Artistic Ambassador for Listen for Life) throughout England, Wales, Turkey, Austria, Spain, Italy, Greece, France, the Netherlands, Scandanavia, South America, Germany, Turkmenistan, Panama, the Czech Republic, India, Switzerland, China, the Philippines, Russia, USA, and all of Eastern Europe.