About Bear Brewer
Bear Brewer is a 16-year-old musician and teacher from Muskegon Michigan who found his passion for music in third grade, the moment he saw someone playing the cello. Since then, the cello has remained his primary instrument, but his musical journey has grown to include violin, viola, bass, guitar, piano, and voice.
Bear currently performs with the Grand Rapids Youth Symphony and the Shoreline Community Orchestra, and was honored to serve as 2nd chair cellist in the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp’s Advanced Strings Camerata. He also plays in his own string quartet, Fourth Movement Strings, which allows him to explore chamber music more deeply and collaborate closely with peers.
As a teacher, Bear believes in a balanced approach: honest encouragement that challenges students while making sure they feel supported. For him, real growth comes not from empty praise, but from caring enough to push someone to do better. He’s learned that students only respond to tough love when they can genuinely feel the love part first.
What Bear loves most about teaching is helping young students realize that the qualities that make someone a good musician -discipline, patience, and thoughtfulness- are also the traits that help shape a good person.
Outside the music studio, Bear serves as president of his school’s Interact Club and logged over 175 volunteer hours last year. One of his proudest accomplishments was establishing an EarlyAct Club at his school, a two-year effort that now gives younger students the same opportunities for growth and service that Interact offers high schoolers.
Currently, Bear is finishing a hand-carved cello, a project he began two years ago with a local luthier and has since taken on solo. When he’s not practicing, teaching, or working on his cello, he’s likely out mountain biking, running, hiking, or camping. Reading is how he unwinds, whether it’s light fiction or classic literature; he counts finishing the unabridged Les Misérables as one of his biggest reading achievements.
Bear plans to study music education and cello performance at either Western Michigan University or Michigan State, with hopes of expanding his teaching and one day working in school settings.