He studied at the University of California at Berkeley, where he earned a PhD in 1972, and at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria where he received diplomas in concert singing and opera.
[1] Among his composition teachers were Fred Lerdahl, Seymour Shifrin, Andrew Imbrie and Max Deutsch, with whom he studied in Paris.
When asked about his musical style in the discussion preceding the 2009 premiere of his opera The Dawn Makers, Shearer answered that it varies according to the demands of the medium.
"[2] Its lyric quality is frequently cited: Jeff Rosenfeld, reviewing Shearer’s Outbound Passenger, found the music "tuneful and harmonious;"[3] and of Shearer’s cantata King Midas, critic Robert Commanday wrote, ‘The singing lines are fluid and supple, animated, alive; the harmony and scoring for a quintet of instruments and percussion battery (two players), rich but delicately so.
"[5] Of the same work, Thomas Busse wrote in San Francisco Classical Voice, "The music’s greatest strength was its singability, attributable to the composer’s being a vocalist himself.