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. He is a also 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 the of Fall 2001 he has taught Music Theory courses at the Crossroads School in Santa Monica. 


For over three decades Richard has given concerts and seminars for the Yamaha Music Education Foundation and has visited Japan many times to perform and teach. For the past 10 summers he has taught improvisation courses at the Showa Academy of Music in Kawasaki, Japan, and was also invited to give seminars and performances at conservatories in Taiwan, China, and Vietnam. He has been a featured performer at several 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.  Richard was also a church organist for 35 years, most recently at St. Martin of Tours in West Los Angeles, from which he retired in 2009.