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Bethany Danel Brooks is a freelance pianist and piano teacher. She holds the BMus in piano performance from Houghton College, the MMus in piano performance from the Royal Academy of Music in London, and the MMus in collaborative piano and chamber music from Temple University, where she studied with Lambert Orkis. Danel Brooks was a prizewinner in the 2001 Bartok-Kabalevsky-Prokofiev International Piano Competition, where she performed for György Sándor.

 

Among other places, Danel Brooks has performed as a soloist and collaborative artist in Prague, Berlin, Philadelphia, New York, Nashville, London, Mexico City, Odessa, and Istanbul. She has appeared with Prague-based string quartet fama Q and accompanied performances of oboists József Kiss and Jean-Jacques Goumaz, violinists Stephen Clapp and Samuel Nebyu, cellists Steuart Pincombe and Anne Martindale Williams, and the Grammy-winning Crossing Choir. With Samuel Nebyu, Danel Brooks recorded a collection of works by composers of African descent, released in 2017 by BCM&D Records. Danel Brooks has premiered numerous works by composer Joshua Stamper, including as a member of his jazz-adjacent ensemble color as time. She is the principal pianist of the Lancaster Symphony Orchestra (Pennsylvania, USA) and has served as staff pianist for the Crescendo Summer Institute in eastern Hungary since 2008. 

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Much of Danel Brooks's work has centered on the intersection of music and faith. For ten years, she was Director of Musical Worship at City Church Philadelphia (now Resurrection Philadelphia). In 2012 she released Quarry Street Hymnal, a solo recording project of sacred music, which was shaped musically by her years of participation in Philadelphia's folk and roots music scene as a vocalist, keyboard player, and occasional accordionist. Her essay “The Discipline of Delight” was published in the book It Was Good: Making Music to the Glory of God (Square Halo Press, 2013).   

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Apart from her professional life, Danel Brooks has spent many hours working to promote the well-being of disadvantaged children. She volunteered for two years as a homework helper for a child in East London's Bangladeshi immigrant community, for nine years as a Court Appointed Special Advocate for a child in Philadelphia’s foster care system, and for four years as a reading tutor for elementary school children in West Philadelphia.

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Danel Brooks lives with her family in Prague,

Czech Republic.