A Gender Variance Who's Who: Sara Davis Buechner (1959

26 November 2011

Sara Davis Buechner (1959–) pianist.

David Buechner was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and being a prodigious early talent at the keyboard, was educated in music at Juilliard School and gained a doctorate from the Manhattan School of Music.

Buechner was Professor of Piano at Manhattan School of Music and New York University, played with the world’s greatest orchestras and was winner of several of the world’s most prestigious piano competitions: the 1983 Queen Elisabeth Music Competition; the Gold Medal at the 1984 Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition; a Bronze Medal in the 1986 Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition.

She transitioned to Sara in 1998, the same year that she recorded the complete piano music of Miklós Rózsa. Some concert promoters actually paid her not to play after belatedly learning of her past.

She has been Professor of Piano at the University of British Columbia since 2003.

She continues to record prolifically, and she like to chat to audiences before playing, and will sometimes tell anecdotes about when she was a little boy. She feels very at home in Vancouver where she can appear openly with her wife.

She was the Keynote Speaker at the 2011 Outgames Human Rights Conference.