Emily Bear: Biography, Achievements & Lasting Legacy

Emily Jordan Bear (born August 30, 2001) is an American composer, pianist, songwriter and singer. After beginning to play the piano and compose music as a small child, Bear made her professional piano debut at the Ravinia Festival at the age of five, the youngest performer ever to play there. She gained wider notice from a series of appearances on The Ellen DeGeneres Show beginning at the age of six. She has since played her own compositions and other works with orchestras and ensembles in North America, Europe and Asia, including appearances at Carnegie Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, the Montreux Jazz Festival and Jazz Open Stuttgart. She won two Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, the youngest person ever to win the award, and also won two Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composers Awards.

In 2013, Bear released an album of her own jazz compositions, Diversity, produced by her mentor and manager, Quincy Jones. She composes and plays classical, jazz and pop music, film and TV scores, and is heard on the 2015 Broadway cast recording of the musical Doctor Zhivago. With her own jazz trio, she released an EP, Into the Blue, in 2017. She was the youngest performer in the history of the Night of the Proms tour (2017). Her 2019 EP Emotions was her first to feature Bear singing her own songs. In 2021, she and Abigail Barlow co-wrote and released an album inspired by the Netflix series Bridgerton, titled The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical, which won the 2022 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album, making Bear the youngest Grammy nominee and winner ever in the musical theater category. She was listed on Forbes' 2022 30 Under 30. With the 2023 release of Dog Gone, she became "the youngest person to score a feature film for release on a streaming platform".

In mid-2023, Bear toured as the featured pianist for Beyoncé's Renaissance World Tour. Barlow and Bear wrote songs for the Disney animated film Moana 2 (2024).