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.