October, 19, 2003, 6:00 PM
LACMA/KMZT 105.1 FM: Free admission - LACMA - 5905 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles
William Vestal, series producer
Richard
Grayson, piano
Program
Pianist extraordinaire, Richard Grayson, will improvise any music in
any style. Listeners are invited to call in with suggestions and requests.
Artist's Biography
Richard Grayson received his Ph.D in composition from UCLA, and joined
the the music faculty of Occidental College in 1969 where he taught until
his retirement in 2001. His 32 years of annual keyboard improvisation concerts
were a highlight of that college's concert season. In addition to specializing
in improvisation, he is a composer of instrumental and vocal music as well
as of live electronic music. His awards include a Fulbright Fellowship
to Belgium and a composition grant from the National Endowment for the
Arts.
Since 1980 Richard has given improvisation concerts and seminars for
the Yamaha Music Education Foundation in the United States, and has been
invited three times to Tokyo to perform and teach. He has also been a featured
performer at two national Piano Pedagogy conferences and was twice invited
to give master classes in improvisation at the Oficina de Musica Festival
in Curitiba, Brazil.
His performance credits include six recordings of contemporary music
on which he is featured as pianist, and four which include his compositions.
For many years he was on the board of the Monday Evening concerts at the
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and frequently performed on that series.
Three of Richard's electronic keyboard works were performed at an historic
University of Massachusetts, Lowell concert featuring the re-creation of
Antheil's complete Ballet Mécanique. Two of these pieces, "Mr. 528"
and "Shoot the Piano Player" have been issued on CD by the Electronic Music
Foundation in New York. In September of 2001 he gave a solo concert of
his improvisation and visual-electronic compositions at the Los Angeles
County Museum of Art. In 2002 and 2003 he was a featured performer at the
Music Teachers' Association of California annual convention. Since Fall,
2001 he has taught Music Theory courses at the Crossroads school in Santa
Monica and is on the faculty of the Aube Tzerko piano institute at the
New Roads school, also in Santa Monica. He has been the organist at St.
Martin of Tours Church in West Los Angeles since 1981.
(Via the Occidental College website)
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