Kyle Beard has been spending most of his time on the clarinet since the age of twelve, beginning by teaching himself using whatever music he could come across at the local music store. An enthusiast of all varieties of music, Mr. Beard enjoys a career performing not only classical music, but rock ‘n’ roll, blues, and whatever else he can get his hands on.
Mr. Beard has participated in the orchestras in his schools as well as at the Aspen Music Festival. He has been involved in numerous chamber music projects and bands in and outside of his conservatory education, performing regularly in the Bay Area on all varieties of clarinets.
An enthusiastic and dedicated teacher, he coached and mentored students at the Presidio Middle School in San Francisco for two years through the Conservatory in the Schools programs, in addition to having been involved in the past in the mentoring of beginning students at the Keene Middle School in his hometown of Keene, New Hampshire. He greatly enjoys working with private students, and has been engaged in teaching private lessons for the past ten years, both in San Francisco and the Baltimore Metro area.
Mr. Beard holds the degree of Master of Music from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Luis Baez. He previously attended the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, where he earned his Bachelor of Music as a student of Steven Barta, and was a recipient of the Sidney Jensen Memorial Woodwind Prize in 2008. His other principal teacher is Michael Sussman, professor of clarinet at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and principal clarinet with the Springfield Symphony. He attended the Aspen Music Festival and School in the Summer of 2008, where he studied with Theodore Oien, and performed in each of the four orchestras at the Festival.