Jeffrey Grossman
Full Biography
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Jeffrey Grossman (email) is a freelance pianist, harpsichordist, conductor, and coach based in New York City. His extensive instrumental repertoire includes music from six centuries for the piano, fortepiano, harpsichord, and organ, and his work as a conductor encompasses everything from Josquin des Prez to Marvin Hamlisch. Grossman holds a Bachelor of Arts in Music from Harvard College (cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa); a Masters of Music in conducting from Carnegie Mellon University, where he studied with Grammy-award winning conductor Robert Page; and a Masters of Music in historical performance from The Juilliard School, where he studied with harpsichordist Kenneth Weiss.
A native of Detroit, Michigan, Grossman co-founded and served as artistic director of the Cambridge Early Music Project, a Boston-based organization that presented numerous concerts, highlights of which include include Schütz’s Musikalische Exequien and Bach’s Jesu, meine Freude and Magnificat. He is currently the harpsichordist of New York-based baroque ensembles Concitato, Fire & Folly, and PHOENIXtail and was the founding harpsichordist of New York period instrument quartet Callisto Ascending. He is also a member of the Sebastian Chamber Players. As a pianist, he has performed over 100 outreach concerts on tours organized by the Piatigorsky Foundation to help bring live classical music to small communities across the United States. Since 2009, he has been a faculty accompanist for the Berkshire Choral Festival, working with conductors Dale Warland, Philip Brunelle, Simon Carrington, Jane Glover, Heinz Ferlesch, Grant Gershon, Julian Wachner, Robert Page, and Kent Tritle.
His teachers include Robert Page and Jameson Marvin in conducting; Louis Nagel in piano; Kenneth Weiss, Don O. Franklin, and Barbara Weiss in harpsichord; Mutsumi Moteki in coaching; and Riccardo Schulz in recording. He has performed in masterclasses of William Christie, Nicholas McGegan, Emma Kirkby, Jakob Lindberg, Fabio Biondi, Rachel Podger, Christopher Hogwood, Lisa Goode Crawford, Jacques Ogg, Edward Parmentier, Webb Wiggins, Robert Mealy (as harpsichordist); Thomas Hampson, Wolfram Rieger, Helen Donath, Thomas Enman, Golda Vainberg-Tatz, Lynn Rice-See (as pianist); and Kirk Trevor, Johannes Schlaefli, Mariusz Smolij, Rodney Eichenberger, Mathis Dulack, Kate Tamarkin, Peter Jaffe, Donald Portnoy, Paul Vermel (as conductor).
He has performed with Chatham Baroque, Trinity Baroque Orchestra, Sebastian Chamber Players, PHOENIXtail, Juilliard415, the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum, the Harvard Glee Club, the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh, the Berkshire Choral Festival, the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute, and the Amherst Early Music Festival Baroque Academy. In summer 2008 and 2009, he performed in dell'Arte Opera Ensemble's Summer Readings series as the pianist for semi-staged performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte.
Grossman is active as a recording pianist and harpsichordist. Most recently, his solo piano CD, Cosmic Light (music for piano by Keith Barnard), was released on the Metier Arts label, and Carson Cooman's Nantucket Dreaming, on which he performs solo and in a trio, was released on Naxos. Previously, he released a two recordings devoted to contemporary American composers: New Dawn, with soprano Amanda Forsythe, of Carson Cooman's vocal works and piano solos (on Albany Records); and the chamber music of Leland Smith with vioinist and violist Sarah Darling (on the Naxos label). He has also released two solo CDs as part of a personal project that seeks to explore connections among diverse styles of keyboard music from all eras and on numerous modern and historical keyboard instruments. The first CD in this project, There and Back, released in September 2006, includes music by fourteen composers from four continents and four centuries. Reunion/Retrouvailles, the next disc in the series, was released in March 2007. It represents an even wider range of musical styles and composers, from Mozart to Wuorinen, including several world premiere recordings and newly commissioned works.
In addition to his work as a performing and recording artist, Grossman is active as a musical engraver using the SCORE music publishing system, which permits an unsurpassed level of professionalism and polish, in addition to the more commonly-used Sibelius notation software. Works he has engraved have been performed by organizations from the Boston and Pittsburgh Symphonies to faculty-conducted groups at Harvard University and the orchestra of the Longy International Baroque Music Festival. Grossman also works as a classical recording editor and mastering artist. His work, as part of Overtone Audio, has been released on labels including Naxos, Gothic Records, Zimbel Records, and Albany Records.
Short Biography (suitable for concert programs)
Jeffrey Grossman’s extensive musical activities include frequent performances as a pianist, harpsichordist, and conductor. Acclaimed for his musicality in every style, he was recently praised as a “sensitive and fluent accompanist” of “flair and conviction” in Fanfare magazine. A native of Detroit, Michigan, he holds degrees from Harvard College, the Juilliard School, and Carnegie Mellon University.
Jeffrey performs with numerous groups in the New York metropolitan area, including the Sebastian Chamber Players, Concitato, Fire and Folly, PHOENIXtail, Callisto Ascending, and the Trinity Baroque Orchestra, and tours parts of the rural United States with artists of the Piatigorsky Foundation. He can be heard on the Naxos, Albany, Métier, and MSR Classics record labels. He currently resides in New York City. For more information, please visit his website at http://www.jeffreygrossman.com