“Gripping, with rapturous renderings of perfumed textures. Thoughtful, passionate and very in the moment.”
— San Jose Mercury News
gREG ANDERSON, CONCERT PIANIST…
Pianist, composer, curator, and filmmaker Greg Anderson resolutely defined his life’s mission early in his career: to make classical music a powerful and relevant force in society. In the two decades since, he has dedicated every ounce of his restless intellect, finetuned ability, and innate connectivity to craft listening experiences that realize that vision.
The worldwide response has been extraordinary. Today Greg is a renowned concert pianist with live tours reaching four continents and 24 countries, 30+ million music video views, daily radio plays, and over a thousand performances of his compositions every year. His artistic endeavors have appeared on screens big and small (documentaries and movies, PBS and MTV, Oprah and Will & Grace) and have inspired a wide array of culture, from a Korean soap opera to a 150-person spectacle at the Drum Corps World Championships.
International touring artist
Greg has toured extensively as a soloist, duo pianist, and chamber musician, with notable recitals in the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Estonia, Romania, Israel, Singapore, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, and most major U.S. cities. He has performed in many of the world’s most significant concert halls, including NYC’s Carnegie and David Geffen halls, D.C.’s Kennedy Center, Munich’s Hercules Hall, Beijing’s National Centre for the Performing Arts, the Seoul Arts Center, and Singapore’s Esplanade. Festivals include the Gilmore, Mostly Mozart, Aspen, Grand Teton, Gina Bachauer, Styriarte, Grand Teton, Santa Fe, Chautauqua, Tippet Rise, Orford, Bowdoin, Ventura, Carmel Bach, and Minnesota Beethoven. He has soloed with the orchestras of San Francisco, Vancouver, Calgary, Boulder, Winnipeg, St. Paul, Rochester, Hartford, Liverpool, and more.
20 years of music-making and friendship
Greg performs in collaboration with Elizabeth Joy Roe as the Anderson & Roe Piano Duo, noted as “the most dynamic duo of this generation” (San Francisco Classical Voice) and “the very model of complete 21st-century musicians” (The Washington Post). Their five critically acclaimed albums on the Universal and Steinway record labels have spent over a dozen weeks at the top of the Billboard Classical Charts and have been heard in movie soundtracks and Olympic figure staking. They are recipients of a 2017 Club Cumming “YAAAAAAAS” award and the Classical Post’s 2019 “Most Innovative Instrumentalist” in piano.
Music videos and social media
Greg is a passionate advocate for community engagement. He has interacted with more than 100,000 students in person, utilizing his knack for decoding music at outreach events and master classes. His mission flourishes online where his reach is even more vast. He personally engages with 75,000 social media followers, and he has produced, directed, and edited 70+ music videos (featuring himself, Anderson & Roe, and others) with the aim to excite and energize young musicians and fans. With an Emmy® nomination, premieres at international film festivals, and millions of views on YouTube, his videos have been influential in shaping the next generation of artists. School teachers share the films in classrooms again and again, and beginner pianists regularly cite the music videos as inspiration for learning to play. Rather stunningly, the Santa Clara Vanguard Drum and Bugle Corp turned Greg’s first-ever music video, “The Devil’s Staircase,”—which has its own cult following among pianophiles—into their 2011 competition program for the Drum Corps World Championships, while his films with Liz appeared in the series finale of Will & Grace and were a source of inspiration for the lauded Korean soap opera Secret Affair. Greg & Liz recently held a composition competition to highlight the work of young composers; they performed excerpts from the 46 submissions on social media and are currently producing a music video featuring the winning composition. In yet another endeavor to demystify classical music, Greg operates a “Musical Mixology” blog featuring cocktails he’s crafted to complement the music of classical composers.
Composer and arranger
Greg’s compositions and arrangements offer yet another outlet for his mission. His 100+ works are featured on the Universal, Sony, EMI, and Steinway record labels and are frequently performed by concert pianists, major orchestras, and amateurs alike. With commissions by The 5 Browns, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Aspen Music Festival and more, his scores reinvent popular classics, explore new pianistic techniques, and engender joyfulness and togetherness in music-making. Piano teachers regularly assign his music to students, and thousands of pianists have uploaded their performances to YouTube. As the Northwest Reverb argued, his music makes “a strong case that playing piano is the most fun thing that two people could ever do together.” Greg’s works are published by Alfred Music on the “Anderson & Roe Duos & Duets Series” and his own publishing company, Awkward Fermata Press.
The Cliburn, From the Top, and more
Greg is recognized as a world leader on the advancement of classical music and attracting new audiences. For two iterations of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition and one of the Cliburn Junior, Greg has served as host and correspondent for the must-watch webcasts, interviewing competitors and providing commentary and insight for millions of viewers worldwide. The finals of the 2017 competition aired live in movie theaters throughout the United States, and the 2022 competition is chronicled in the upcoming documentary Crescendo, which includes interviews with Greg. Similarly, Greg has shared his advocacy for classical music while guest hosting NPR’s From the Top, a radio show and non-profit organization devoted to developing the stories, talents, and character of young classically trained musicians. He has been invited to present as the keynote artist at dozens of music teacher conventions, including the 2013 Music Teachers National Association national convention, and international leader symposiums such as Entertainment Gathering, the Imagine Solutions Conference, Chicago Ideas Week, and Mexico’s Ciudad de las Ideas. Greg’s intuitively creative approach has attracted the attention of such media outlets as PBS, MTV, the BBC, Oprah, and the Today Show; he is profiled in Nick Romeo’s Driven, David Cutler’s The Savvy Musician, and Adrian Daub’s Four-Handed Monsters, and he has been featured on NPR’s Performance Today, All Things Considered, and A Prairie Home Companion, as well as magazines such as Pianist, Gramophone, Listen, Clavier Companion, and Chilled.
Juilliard and Yale
Greg received his Doctorate and Master of Musical Arts degrees from Yale University and his master’s and bachelor’s degrees from The Juilliard School, where one of his performances was handpicked to appear on the Sounds of Juilliard CD celebrating the school’s centenary.
Greg is a proud Steinway artist.
All photos credit: Anna Azarov
