Claudia Stevens was born in Redding, California on May 29, 1949 and attended Vassar College, graduating summa cum laude with the Frances Walker Prize in piano performance.
In 1977 Stevens joined the Music faculty at the College of William and Mary, where her papers and an archive of her original works and recordings are housed.
[3] Stevens' piano performances[4] focused on new music, with recitals in 1979 and 1981 at the National Gallery in Washington, DC in honor of Roger Sessions[5] and Aaron Copland.
Stevens commissioned over twenty American composers, including Shulamit Ran, Samuel Adler, Robert Xavier Rodriguez, Andrew Imbrie, Allen Shearer, Sheila Silver, Betsy Jolas, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Jeffrey Mumford and Vivian Fine, to contribute new pieces for those recitals, also performing them in Dallas[7] and Boston's Jordan Hall.
Dreadful Sorry, Guys (2001), one of three works published by Andrei Codrescu in his poetry journal Exquisite Corpse, dealt with hate crimes and homophobia.